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February 7

Star Trek: Picard episode

Where I can find a written summary of the recent Star Trek: Picard episode "The End is the Beginning" (not interested in YouTube discussions of it). Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:59, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here on Memory Alpha. I'm not reading it myself to see how accurate it is, since I haven't watched the episode myself yet, but usually the descriptions there are good. --142.112.159.101 (talk) 08:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. That summary of the plot is very short, however. Can anyone find anything longer? The Star Trek: Picard article doesn't cover it yet. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 09:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yet is the operative word. Like Wikipedia, the content there is user generated and free, so you get what you pay for. The earlier episodes have longer synopses (e.g. here). We don't have separate article for episodes of that series, so options are limited; I'd be surprised if there is a better free online source for stuff like this than Memory Alpha. Matt Deres (talk) 19:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 8

When did the Adult Swim website launch?

Please provide a source with the answer. Thanks, Thatone~~weird~~wikier Say hi 21:05, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Our Adult swim article says "Debuting in 2001....". HiLo48 (talk) 23:40, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo48, yes, but I need a source as well. The info in the article is unsourced. Thanks, Thatone~~weird~~wikier Say hi 06:49, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did you actually go to that article? The History section goes into a lot of detail and has a lot of sources. I reckon something there should help. HiLo48 (talk) 09:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo48, I've read the article and looked through quite a lot of the sources, but I can't find any information. That is why I came here. Thanks, Thatone~~weird~~wikier Say hi 13:01, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Sorry. Don't know where to go from there. HiLo48 (talk) 20:51, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

HiLo48, that's alright! Any information related to the question is helpful. Don't worry about a full answer if it's unclear. Thanks, Thatone~~weird~~wikier Say hi 01:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 9

Jackal (1997)

In the movie Jackal (1997), Bruce Willis kills a hijacker by applying a sprayed substance onto the trunk hinge which is then touched by the criminal in question. Is that device based on reality because it looks a lot like Vulcan unconscioussness-ing to me? I like that movie a lot, but Richard Gere outsmarting Bruce Willis in a criminal setting, c'mon... Splićanin (talk) 02:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What was the movie's explanation? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The criminal touches it, immediately produces a pained grimace, clenches his neck with both hands, drops to the ground and presumably dies in agony. Splićanin (talk) 04:04, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) I don't know the scene in question, but there are a variety of poisons which can kill after Absorption (skin) through the skin. Most will take minutes to hours or even longer to kill, depending also on the amount. Not the seconds often depicted in such shows. Note that a long time period doesn't mean you have a good chance of reversing the poisoning, Karen Wetterhahn died 10 months after she spilled a few drops of Dimethylmercury onto her latex gloves. While treatment did only start 5 months after exposure, and her condition rapidly deteriorated after, my understand is there is a good chance immediate treatment would not have saved her either. (Hydrofluoric acid burn although also nasty, is far less deadly.) Her case highlights another point, without sufficient protective equipment, spraying the substance onto something seems a good way to risk killing yourself. Many such shows depict some sort of super antidote which you take beforehand making you completely immune to harmful affects but the reality is often not so simple and you're far better off ensuring you are not exposed.

VX (nerve agent) is one example of such a poison, and was used in a somewhat similar way to kill Masami Tsuchiya (according to the earlier article or Aum Shinrikyo it was sprinkled directly on the neck) and believed to have also been used for the Assassination of Kim Jong-nam (applied to his face, possibly in the form of a Binary chemical weapon). There are plenty of others e.g. the Novichok agent one of which was used in the non-fatal Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and later caused a fatality in the 2018 Amesbury poisonings from being sprayed directly on to her wrists.

As the Skirpal poisoning article mentions, it's easily possible there have been others killed in a similar way, simply never detected or were detected but not publicly. And the fact VX was used to kill Tsuchiya only came to be known from a confession although it was suspected he was poisoned with some Organophosphate pesticide. (Of course you don't generally expect random unknown people to be killed by VX.)

Smearing seems likely to be significantly safer than spraying although still not without risks. But I'm also sure we only barely know what the various intelligence agencies etc get up to, and many of them are often (but not always, Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko) interested in preventing detection and minimising collateral (not least because it draws more attention) and succeeding. And they generally have plenty of resources and often have long times for planning. So randomly spraying stuff onto a hinge and hoping the right person touches it enough to kill them but preferably no one else, is probably not often going to be a good plan.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nil Einne, wow, lots of good information contained in there. I wonder if I would trust you to prepare my meals. Do you read a large number of crime novels? My mother did, and my father was a scientist who cleaned up lab spills, so if ever there is a husband-wife duo with prospects of being Master Poisoners, except for their strong Christian ethos of caring for the weak... and look how I turned out. Elizium23 (talk) 05:00, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Probably should emphasise that in cases of known intelligence agency style poisonings, there is still generally a lot of public uncertainties over precisely what happened. In the Skirpal case, the general suggestion is Novichok came from the door handle of their home since that's where the highest concentration is said to have been found. But in both their case and Kim Jong-nam, there's a lot about the official public stories that leave some questioning the claims. See e.g. [1]. I'm not suggesting some wacky conspiracy theory involving a false flag operation, but there may very well be details of the official public story that aren't correct. (In terms of doubt over the door handle theory, those doubts generally come in the form of the time taken for effects, how quickly both seem to have been affected once their did start to show effects, and the fact that they don't seem to have widely spread it outside the house AFAWK. I don't think anyone who knows about nerve agents actually doubts you someone could easily receive a lethal or sublethal dose of a deadly never agent from touching a door handle.) Nil Einne (talk) 05:20, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One final point since I realised my antidote comment when combined my comment on Karen Wetterhahn may be misinterpreted. My understanding is that with many nerve agents, prompt and effective treatment means you often have a good chance of surviving [2]. Prompt may mean within a minute or two though and it will help a great deal if someone else is treating you. And there are substances which can be taken beforehand which may reduce the risks from exposure e.g. Pyridostigmine is used for soman. Still, with sufficient exposure you may have lingering effects, and even the acute effects are likely to mean days of treatment. I'm not saying it's impossible to develop a substance which is a quick and deadly contact poison, but you could taken something beforehand (or just after) which would make you immune to any effects, but I'm not aware of anything like that which is public knowledge. Simplistically if you're not worried about other's knowing how to reverse your poison, maybe you could try developing an opiod transdermal poison or something. Nil Einne (talk) 05:53, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of internet forums have addressed this problem: movies.stackexchange (which includes some screen caps of the episode) suggests dimethylmercury, as linked above, while a Quora respondent goes for aconitum. However, www.ar15.com wisely says "it's a movie thing" and helpfully points out that the can used is actually Afro Sheen hair spray. Alansplodge (talk) 21:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You've all been immensely helpful, some even too much so :) I can only agree with Alansplodge regarding "movie things", since the same van to which the agent had been applied is seen in the very next scene. Thought such a material would take slightly longer to have its effect diminished. All in all, thank you all. Jackal is one of my all-time favourites, alongside Snatch, Lock/Stock, Ace Ventura and Scarface. Best, Splićanin (talk) 00:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is discussed by the director in the DVD commentary. He said that the script called for a very different and complex scene. They didn't have time or money to shoot the scene. So, they grabbed a can of hair spray from the makeup trailer and turned it into a weird "spy poison" scene that was very cheap. In fact, that isn't Bruce's hand when it is being sprayed. They used a cheap stand-in. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 10

First music festival

What was the fist modern music festival?--5.169.151.191 (talk) 10:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That article is in desperate need of improvement and expansion... This blog post suggests that - depending on your interpretation of "modern" - the first may have been the National Jazz and Blues Festival, first held at Richmond in England in 1961. But that's clearly not true, as that festival took its inspiration from the Newport Jazz Festival, first held in 1954. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:49, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In Britain, there was also the Sidmouth Folk Festival, which started in 1955, and the Beaulieu Jazz Festival, first held in 1956. More information in this source. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

... and this source refers to, among others, the Cheltenham International Festival (started 1945), the Edinburgh Festival (started 1947), the Nice Jazz Festival (started 1948), and others. Before any of those, there was the National Eisteddfod of Wales. Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:37, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Edinburgh Festival article leads one to Glyndebourne Festival Opera which started in 1934, and more searching leads to the Göttingen International Handel Festival which started in 1919. Whether that counts as "modern" (when you say "modern music festival" it is unclear whether one means a modern festival of music or a festival of modern music). If you mean the first option (a modern festival of music) then what is the cut-off we're using for "modern". If we mean the second, it depends on what sorts of music we count as "modern" (is it strictly by modern genres of music (jazz, blues, rock, hip hop, etc.) or do we also include older genres of music written in modern times (classical, baroque, etc.) Definitions matter here. --Jayron 32 14:07, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If we're going classical, then the Three Choirs Festival was first recorded in 1719, but I suspect that depends on your definition of "modern" - see early modern period for example. Alansplodge (talk) 17:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah the Bayreuth Festival is from the 1800s but is probably not what you meant by modern. 73.93.153.2 (talk) 17:45, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

acording to me the modern music to start whit blues and not includes modern and contemporaly classical music.--5.169.117.187 (talk) 17:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article goes with 1954 Newport Jazz Festival linked above, and has the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival as the first for rock and pop. However, the Wikipedia article for that event cites the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival which was one week earlier, but less well promoted and attended. Alansplodge (talk) 18:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

... and the August 1965 National Jazz and Blues Festival at Richmond featured the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and Manfred Mann. "As the official handout explained: ‘Something unheard of is happening at Richmond … for the first time … the pure jazz-men are outnumbered by beat and rhythm-and-blues groups who are no stranger to the hit parade’." The NJBF the following year, 1966, featured Eric Clapton, the Spencer Davis Group, and the Small Faces. There is probably no definitive answer to the question, however "modern" is defined - music festivals developed incrementally and gradually on both sides of the Atlantic, with each event learning from previous ones. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on rock festival... which may be helpful. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:24, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that what the OP means by a 'modern music festival' might be a greenfield festival, i.e. a few days of temporary stages and structures and a campsite that are dismantled and leave an empty field in their wake. Archetypically you might think of something like the original Woodstock festival or Glastonbury. In any event I'd guess that the first of these would be in the early 60's as the early years of something like Newport Jazz was centred around a hotel.Blakk and ekka 11:54, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian (possibly martimes) children show from late 1970's to mid or late 1980's

I'm not certain, but I think it was called Tree House. The intro theme was "Com with me. We're going to the tree house. Everybody's coming, come along with me". The host had white hair, dressed in white, with a white guitar. He had two puppets, who when mail arrived, would sing "Letters, we get letters. We get lots & lots of letters". Anybody know of this show & remember it? GoodDay (talk) 20:28, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I found it. It aired on CKCO-TV. -- GoodDay (talk) 21:16, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict, posting anyway, since you made me go through this) I couldn't find a lot, but it looks like there was a show called Tree House broadcast by CKCO with "Danny Caughlin. Left to right...Pat Ludwig, Ted Rooney, Betty Thompson, Danny, Ken and Terry Thomas. Ken and Terry did the puppets.". Also mentioned here, where he's called 'Danny Coughlin'. And here's a clip ---Sluzzelin talk 21:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's definitely the program. Caughlin's 12-stringer was always out of tune & the original puppets were named Ralphie & Leroy. GoodDay (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

February 11

Parasite

Is Parasite considered the first foreign language film to win Best Picture, or should that honour instead go to The Artist? I haven't seen either film, so I don't know. 68.129.97.180 (talk) 20:13, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]