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July 4

Any possible height estimate of Black Fortress

In the 1983 movie Krull, was there any given estimated size (by individual observation, production notes, etc) of the Black Fortress when it is flying around as a space ship, or at least when its planted on the surface? --72.234.12.37 (talk) 16:12, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Electric guitar playing sound

In the chorus of the Alice in Chains song "Rain When I Die" and this man's cover of Matchbox 20's "Bent", there is a distinct playing sound that I've never been able to properly describe, rather warm and wistful harmonics. The closest I've managed to come to describing for myself is "nostalgia chimes". Is there any proper term or description for this type of electric guitar sound? And how would these notes be produced? I imagine an amp is used, but my understanding of electric guitars is bad (Hell I don't know the term for the sound created by sliding one's hand across the neck's length) and I always assumed most amps, especially of the pedal variety, are used to either exaggerate certain notes or distort the guitar's sound when activated or tuned to do so, otherwise they just feed the guitar's sound though a speaker. --72.234.12.37 (talk) 16:31, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, a chorus effect from an effects pedal (not an amp in itself, but closely connected) or possibly from a module built into the amp itself. Specifically, don't ask me which amp or pedal these are, though there should at least be a list in Dirt's liner notes to narrow that sound down. A pick slide is likely what you mean by the hand slide. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:47, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Per the Jerry Cantrell article, he uses a Boss CE-3 and/or CH-1. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Dirt uses multiple effect on his pedal, if you would provide us with a time stamp on when he starts to use the effect to which you refer, we may be able to narrow down the exact effect chosen. He uses a "wah-wah" at times as well as "standard metal distortion" and "reverb heavy" effects. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.162.76.127 (talk) 09:27, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I did say during the chorus of Rain When I Die, so the timestamps would be 01:50, 02:44, and 04:35, those dreamlike wistful-sounding notes I've described as "nostalgia chimes". InedibleHulk already managed to identify them as chorus effects which I guess may count as a form of heavy reverb.

I wanted to say to him though that the pick slide was not the sound I had in mind initially when I typed about the hand-sliding sound; I thought more of a "rolling" sound than a "grinding" sound, as can be heard at 00:46, 01:34, and 02:12 from Kutless's "To Know That You're Alive", at the end of Breaking Benjamin's "Polyamorous", this cover of Sevendust's "Trust" at 01:37 and 04:06, or in this man's cover of ERRA's The Hypnotist at 03:12. But hey, now I at least know the term for that grinding note trick that Paradise Lost and Gojira like to do a lot of! --72.234.12.37 (talk) 13:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

With your fret hand, it's just "sliding" (this is downward, perhaps counterintuitively). As an intro or lead-in, could say "slide-in" (or "power slide-in" given a power chord). Kutless may have used studio magic after the fact, sounds a bit unnatural. "Innervision" by System of a Down opens with a humdinger of a growl, in my opinion. Might be some whammy bar involved there, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:12, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

John Playford called a descending slide a "double backfall", that's a pretty sweet bleak metal term, at least by his century's standards of darkness. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:40, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 7

Question about the movie and tv industry

Has filming in movies and tv shows resumed in La or New York? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:8D80:406:AB36:FA01:99CB:1818:8C9D (talk) 02:39, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why the specific distance for the marathon?

From 1896 to 1920, the organizers of each successive Olympic games chose not only the course for the marathon, but what distance the race would cover. After 1920 the distance that had been used in London in 1908 was made the standard and has been used ever since. But why did they pick that specific distance? The 1924 games weren't in London, and the distance wasn't a round number in either miles or kilometers. So what was the motivation for fixing on that particular standard? --174.89.49.204 (talk) 07:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am open to correction but I believe that the distance of a marathon is set by the distance between Marathon, Greece and Athens, Greece. As set out in the original Olympics of antiquity. 86.162.76.127 (talk) 08:27, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's only true in general terms. :There is a more specific explanation here. The distance was apparently decided at a meeting of the World Records Committee of the IAAF on May 27, 1921. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:28, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I can't read that page. But as noted in the article the OP linked, the 1908 race happened to be 26 miles plus 385 yards, and that distance was set as the standard in 1921. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the text mentioned above:

For the first marathon race in 1896 at the Olympic Games in Athens, a "runable course", about 40km long, was chosen, which led from the gates of Marathon to the stadium in Athens. As there was not an athletics regulations commission to set the norm until the founding of the IAAF in 1913 in Berlin, going forward, every event organiser determined the exact length of the marathon course according to the local conditions.
Due to the dominance of North American athletics, the length of most marathon courses was set at about 25 miles or 40km. In Boston, the oldest marathon, which was first held in April 1897 and every year since, the course was only 24 miles leading from Hopkinton to Boston.
The traditional 25 mile course served as a basis for the Olympic Marathon in 1908 in London. The announcement for bids read: "The 40km marathon race will take run on public streets, which will be marked by the Amateur Athletics Association, and will end on the stadium track, where the last 1/3 mile is to be run (1 lap = 536 metres).
The 1908 Olympic athletics competitions took place from July 13-25, 1908, in the "Great Stadium" in Shepherd's Bush, London. The Olympic Marathon took place in London on Friday, July 24, 1908.
For the first time, the course in London was precisely measured, and a detailed course map was published. The 1908 marathon course was measured backwards from the finish to the start, which had been set as the east terrace of Windsor Castle.
This starting point was chosen so that members of the Royal Family would be able to start off the marathon. The planned 25 miles from the entrance of the "Great Stadium" ended at Barnespool Bridge in Eton, and the distance from there to the start was one more mile, making the total course length 26-miles.
The marathon was then to end directly in front of the Royal Box in the London Olympic Stadium - meaning one complete stadium lap would not be possible, as had originally been called for. The distance from the entrance of the stadium to the Royal Box was 385 yards. This made the formula for the London marathon "25 miles + 1 mile + 385 yards; that makes 42.195km. The official report, however, falsely calculated the conversion, listing it as 42.263km.
To make it comparable, the rematch, which took place between Hayes and Pietri after the 1908 Olympic Games, was also run on a course based upon the London measurements of 42.195km = 26 miles, 385 yards. This then served as a quasi-standard for the marathon course, which some marathon organisers followed from then on.
With the founding of the IAAF in Berlin in 1913, a regulations commission was established, which was to create a draft for the athletics program for the IOC session in Lyon in 1914. In this draft, which was approved in 1914 at the second IAAF congress in Lyon, the marathon was set at 40.200 metres, or 25 miles. The IOC, however, decided at the Olympic Congress in 1914 in Lyon to set the distance at 42 km. According to the Greek IOC member Alexander Merkati, this was the correct course length (probably because this is the distance run at the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens).
Due to the local conditions at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, the marathon distance was extended to 42.750km. This new course length led to renewed discussions on the course distance, bringing it to the tables at the fourth IAAF Congress in Geneva in 1921.
On May 27, 1921, the competent IAAF organ, the World Records Committee, decided to set the distance of the Olympic marathon according to the London model: 42.195km = 26 miles, 385 yards!

Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That 1908 marathon was where Dorando Pietri pushed himself to the limit on a hot day. That last 385 yards nearly did him in. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:56, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just to correct a mistake by one of the earlier posters. The marathon was not run in the Olympic games of Antiquity. It was an event specially created for the first modern Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, based on the story of the battle of Marathon. It was a great success and caught the public's imagination, and as a result was repeated at all future games (and duplicated elsewhere, like Boston), but the event was not standardized for some time, as explained in the paragraphs reproduced above. The marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis was quite a fiasco, making the need for some standardization obvious (hence the efforts by London four years later to measure the distance properly and so forth). Xuxl (talk) 13:05, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So the key words in the cited page are "This then served as a quasi-standard for the marathon course, which some marathon organisers followed from then on." In other words, it was just after the 1908 Olympics that people started wanting a standard distance, and that explains why the 1908 distance was considered a reasonable choice. Thanks. --174.89.49.204 (talk) 23:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Clint Eastwood

I am looking for a video that I have heard about but never seen. It involves Clint Eastwood lighting a cigarette; He supposedly flicks the cigarette and catches it with his mouth while simultaneously lighting a zippo lighter. It is supposed to prove that he is the coolest man in Hollywood. Any help would be appreciated as Google and Youtube searches have not been successful. Thanks 86.162.76.127 (talk) 13:05, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is some speculation that he did this trick on a Swedish talk show, but 1) nobody can track down the incident 2) he didn't smoke. See Rumors about Clint Eastwood's cigarette trick. However, a respondant to Eastwood's elusive cigarette trick! says that "The interview was done in Sweden by a lady named Stina Dabrowski, some time early 1990's (I estimate it to 92-94 or so)". Alansplodge (talk) 17:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gjorde Clint Eastwood verkligen ett cigarettrick under en intervju? (Did Clint Eastwood really make a cigarette trick during an interview?) has a quote from Dabrowski about the 1992 interview with Clint Eastwood (in Swedish, my translation from Bing Translate):

"The translation machine didn't work so I had to sit and translate directly what he said. This meant that everything took a lot longer, which meant that I did not have time to finish. Then I got so amazingly angry that I threw the script bundle on the desk and shouted 'fucking hell shit', and it went out on the air... If he had done this trick, I think I would have remembered it, but I think unfortunately it's a tall tale, even if it would have been very fun if it were true. But I don't know, and the only way to find out is to find that program".

The article continues: 'There seems to be no recording of the 1992 interview with Clint Eastwood, so it is not possible to verify for sure that the trick did not happen at this stage. "We have naturally had that tape ourselves, but in some big cleaning we have probably thrown it away, unaware of how much it would be," says Stina Lundberg Dabrowski, who promises to say whether she would find the tape in the attic at some point... But then why do so many people think they have seen Clint Eastwood do this cool cigarette trick on television? The answer to that question, we might find in a psychological phenomenon called "false memory". It is simply when a person thinks they remember something that has never happened. This is something that can also affect large groups of people'. Alansplodge (talk) 17:54, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe he only smoked on-screen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

He certainly smoked in films, but it seems unlikely that a non-smoker would take cigarettes and a lighter to a chat show, still less light one. Alansplodge (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The concept Mandela effect may be of interest. I wonder if there's enough material out there to give this its own article: it's the cover story on this month's Fortean Times, for example. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.20 (talk) 12:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 8

Popopopoulos

I remember a comedy movie where a Greek or Greek-American character's last name was either Popopopoulos or it had a lot of pointless "-po-" syllables added before the end to make fun of Greek last names like Papandopoulos. I'm not sure when the movie was made, I'm thinking it must've been either 80s or a 60s movie with someone like Peter Sellers, it seems like this sort of joke has become forbidden in this century. Can't really remember anything else about the movie. Duckduckgo only brings up Jerry Mandy, who died in '45 and I've never seen a movie that old. 93.136.75.118 (talk) 20:02, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not what you after (being a cartoon) but how about Rastapopoulos? 41.165.67.114 (talk) 06:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah maybe it was a Tintin cartoon or comic. Could've heard/seen it there. I could've sworn there were more "po"-s tho. 93.136.97.46 (talk) 19:20, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The name had issues even then: "The name "Rastapopoulos" had been invented by one of Hergé's friends; Hergé thought it was hilarious and decided to use it.[3] He devised Rastapopoulos as an Italian-American with a Greek surname, but the character fitted anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews; Hergé was adamant that the character was not Jewish." 41.165.67.114 (talk) 06:23, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Webster (TV series) In this show his adoptive father's surname was Papadopolis. 86.172.130.137 (talk) 09:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I Googled "Popopopoulos" and it led me to One Night in Lisbon, though that was a 1941 film.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:56, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I found that too initially but that's not it, it's much too old. 93.136.97.46 (talk) 19:20, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 9

Why one side of the accordeon has one type of keys and another has another type keys?

If having this many keys is a possible thing, why not have the extreme amount of small round keys at both sides of accordeon?2804:7F2:688:3746:286A:EDA:EACA:8876 (talk) 00:13, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Have you checked the accordion article? The answer is probably in there somewhere, (but not obvious). 107.15.157.44 (talk) 05:43, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Quoted from the article itself: "One side (usually the right-hand manual) is normally used for playing the melody and the the other side (usually left-hand manual) for playing the accompaniment".

Also the piano keys are but one of many styles of accordion structure. Accordions where both body halves have button keys definitely do exist, but those tend to be either specific to certain cultures or expensive and labouring to make as that requires both body halves to be big and heavy enough to house all the numerous valves and pallet mechanics. Piano keys are simply more familiar/conventional. "Accordions have many configurations and types. What may be easy to do with one type of accordion could be technically challenging or impossible with another, and proficiency with one layout may not translate to another." --72.234.12.37 (talk) 08:54, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would also point out that while it is possible to play a tune on the piano keys, the button side is laid out quite differently and is only for playing chords, so the major chords lie along one row, minor and seventh chords along other rows etc. and they are arranged according to harmonics i.e. C, G, D, A, E, etc.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:34, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Metric measurements at the Olympic Games - When?

The section above on the Marathon distance, with lots of Americans describing it in miles and yards, got me thinking. I know that all Olympic Games measurements today are metric, and as far as I can remember, have been for at least as far back as 1956 when I was lucky enough to first attend. But when did this start? The modern Olympics were created by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, who would have naturally been inclined to use metric measurements right from the beginning. Is this what happened? Have all Olympic measurements been metric all along? HiLo48 (talk) 00:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Most events have been measured in metric since the beginning in 1896, with a few exceptions such as the 5 mile race in 1908. Nanonic (talk) 01:41, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There were a few sports that continued to use non-metric. The International Football Association Board only began to prefer metric in the Laws of the Game in the late 1990s and the onfield markings are still based on imperial measurements. Field hockey also converted about the same time. Hack (talk) 04:44, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would have assumed that the International Olympic Committee would have decided the measurement conventions on a sport-by-sport basis according to each respective international sports federation. Zzyzx11 (talk) 11:53, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the modern athletics track originated in Britain, one lap equalling exactly a quarter of a mile, or 440 yards or two furlongs. [1] This rather neatly converts to 402.3 metres, so not much rounding required.

Olympics aside, our article about the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Jamaica shows that track races were still measured in yards, although metres had taken over by the time of the 1970 British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

Also, the mile run is "the only imperial distance for which the IAAF records an official world record. Although the mile does not feature at any major championship competition, the Wanamaker Mile, Dream Mile, and Bowerman Mile races are among the foremost annual middle-distance races indoors and outdoors, respectively." Alansplodge (talk) 14:22, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A final thought, the 1908 Summer Olympics were held at the White City Stadium in London where the running track was one third of a mile (586 yards and 2 feet), which must have made metric conversion more interesting. Alansplodge (talk) 15:05, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

July 10

similar or different hairstyles?

I noticed something about two hairstyles Rosamund Pike wore in Die Another Day. One was when she was in the lobby of a fencing club. The other was when she was in a meeting with Judi Dench. Are they the same or are they different? What kinds of hairstyles are they?142.255.72.126 (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]