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May 18

Any ongoing competitive series about home or amateur cooks?

For all I know, there are MasterChef versions, like MasterChef (British TV series) and MasterChef Australia. I don't want short-lived ones, like Best Home Cook or Top Chef Amateurs, or any show about bakers, like The Great British Bake Off. Well, there are categories of such competitions, but I think creating a subcategory of them is risky and subject to guidelines. George Ho (talk) 22:48, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@George Ho: If I recall correctly Chopped_(TV_series) has both amateur and professional contestants. RudolfRed (talk) 17:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

@RudolfRed: Hmm... I'm thinking only amateur cooks, unfortunately. George Ho (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

You might have a browse through Category:Cooking television series by country. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

@RudolfRed: You're thinking of Cooks vs. Cons. Chopped has only pros. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

The original Australia My Kitchen Rules is possibly ongoing. The NZ spinoff My Kitchen Rules NZ is also sort of ongoing, I don't think it was specifically cancelled with the rest cancellations but I suspect the prospect of any future season will depend on the current one. No idea of the South African one. Nil Einne (talk) 09:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I think various Come Dine with Me are also ongoing although I believe the competition tends to be more limited despite there being a winner and a smallish vash prize, whatever may have happened in 2016. Nil Einne (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

May 19

Looking for a spy movie

I'm looking for a - presumably - spy movie that must be from the 1960s or 1970s. I remember a scene in it in which a group (I can't remember exactly whether it was the good guys or the bad guys, but I suspect the former) retreated into a bug-proof room. This transparent/translucent greenhouse-like thing was bug-proof because water flowed around it from above, like a curtain. Does anyone know what movie this might be? I don't think it can be the Mini-Max series with its cones of silence, I can remember the water very clearly, and it was probably not a parody. The room was also big enough for a conference table for several people. Besides, I was too young or not even born to have seen the series on television in the 1960s or 1970s; if it had been in the 1990s, I would probably still remember it. --Thorbjoern (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

By way of clarification, I suggest that "the Mini-Max series" (that this isn't) was Get Smart. --142.112.143.8 (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Get Smart's primary joke was the Cone of Silence. There were variations, such as a Closet of Silence. There was also the Umbrella of Silence, big enough for a table and four people. It had plastic sheeting around it to look like water pouring off. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 17:43, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

May 23

Reverse of a picardy third

Listen to the Exciters song "Tell Him". The chorus is in E major, but (according to all sheet music sources for this song) the final word "now" is on an E minor chord. This is the reverse of a picardy third. Does this have a special name?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

On a listen, the chorus in the Exciters version is in F major, and the guitarist clearly comps F major on that final word/the following final two bars of the chorus. The original version (performed by Gil Hamilton, as "Tell Her") has the chorus in Bb major, and the harmony for the bars in question is similarly Bb major. The same transcription error popping up in multiple sheet music sources is a relatively common occurrence in popular song, usually stemming from an error in a hastily-made fake book chart that later gets copied into "official" transcriptions/arrangements.

If such a harmonic progression had occured here (to a minor chord), it would be considered a type of modulation to the parallel minor (sometimes termed "parallel modulation"), as the following sections (the verses) are in an F minor tonality. In addition, the term "Picardy third" is typically only applied to the end of a work/large structural section (the latter chiefly in Western classical music), so a movement at the end of a verse-chorus form section isn't quite analogous. (fugues) (talk) 01:16, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

In List of major/minor compositions it is simply called a "reverse Picardy third"; thus also it is called in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert's Winterreise. A nice example from classical music is Mendelssohn's Op. 7 No. 7. Double sharp (talk) 02:20, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

May 27

seeking Shchedryk sheet

Where do people look for written scores these days, preferably open-source & academic types instead of sketchy sites and annoying apps? I would love a Carol of the Bells in four voices. Temerarius (talk) 02:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Temerarius: Try IMSLP for public-domain works. Unfortunately, the English lyrics are still under copyright, so the scores only have lyrics in Ukrainian (as well as Italian and Spanish translations by respective editors who released them under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Double sharp (talk) 08:08, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much @Double sharp! Temerarius (talk) 21:36, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Shams al-Ma'arif as a model for the Necronomicon?

Could it be that Lovecraft used the book "Shams al-Ma'arif" as a model for his fictional book Necronomicon? 2A02:8071:60A0:92E0:0:0:0:992A (talk) 14:57, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

It's possible that he had heard of it, but as the first English translations appeared in 2022, and I'm fairly sure that Lovecraft could not read Arabic (or Urdu or Turkish, into which it has also been translated), he would likely not have known it in detail.

In his Lovecraft: A Biography (New York, Doubleday, 1975), L.Sprague de Camp states (p167) that "The name [Necronomicon] was probably suggested by the Astronomica of Manilius . . . quoted by Lovecraft in his newspaper columns." De Camp goes on to cite a number of real, legendary and fictional books that Lovecraft mentioned in prose and correspondence, but Shams al-Ma'arif is not amongst them.

Those real books include William Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904), Joseph Glanvil's [sic] Sadducismus Triumphatus (1668, published 1681), The ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, and Helena Blavatsky's The Book of Dzyan (plagiarised from Sanscrit texts).

Of course, Lovecraft was a voluminous correspondent, and it's possible that references to Shams al-Ma'arif have turned up in papers of his studied since 1975. I can certainly see why you make the suggestion.

One further possibility: Lovecraft was an avid fan of The One Thousand and One Nights from early childhood, and in two separate letters recounted that he adopted the pseudonym of Abdul Alhazred around the age of five (see Lin Carter Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (New York, Ballantine Books, 1972, Chapter 1)). Having access to his maternal grandfather's "voluminous" library, he probably read an adult rather than child's version, so if Shams al-Ma'arif is mentioned, he would have learned of its existence thus. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 20:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Other potential sources of inspiration are the Picatrix and the Kitāb al-nawāmīs, of which the text was accessible.  --Lambiam 09:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

May 28

Violating the suspension of disbelief

I'm curious at what point writers and filmmakers say "that won't work" or "we can't do it that way" to allow the suspension of disbelief to function. I just watched The Killer (2023), and the only problem I had with the entire film was when The Killer travels to Florida to take out "The Brute" who tried to kill him in his absence and beat his girlfriend instead. This scene makes no sense to me, and I'm surprised the writers and the filmmakers wrote and shot it this way. What's even stranger to me is that fans are saying its the best part of the film. I don't get it, as I see it as the worst scene of the entire production. The Killer is much smaller than The Brute, doesn't know the layout of his place, and yet manages to take out this guy in his own home because The Brute has a limp. The Brute has the upper hand in almost ever aspect of the fight, yet The Killer somehow manages to kill the guy. What is the calculus the writer and director use here? It doesn't work for me at all, yet the fans seem to dig it simply because of the extended, gratuitous fight scene, a fight that makes no sense at all, and in reality, The Killer should have lost. Viriditas (talk) 21:50, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

You have clearly not yet suspended your disbelief. As this was a requirement incumbent upon you as a consumer of this production, you have failed to uphold your end of the deal, and the producers are entitled to sue you for breach of contract. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:40, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean, at least in something like The Matrix, we are allowed to suspend disbelief because the characters can get away with whatever they want in the computer simulated world (but the consequences remain just as deadly). I just did a marathon rewatch of all The Matrix films, and this idea was executed flawlessly (although I quibble with the notion of free will and determinism that is implicit in the story, as it it's quite confusing for the audience). But I don't see that happening at a scriptural level in the writing with The Killer. Why am I supposed to believe that The Killer, who is clearly suffering from sleep deprivation and anxiety, is able to defeat another killer who is twice his size and is fighting on his home turf? It doesn't work for me, but yet, it seems to work for others. My question is why do most people accept this? Viriditas (talk) 22:47, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

The hero prevails against seemingly impossible odds. It's a very old device. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:03, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. Vintage Hollywood westerns have the bad guys firing off hundreds of rounds without hitting anything, but the good guy can hit a man hiding behind a rock 200 yards away with one shot from his revolver. Alansplodge (talk) 11:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Or going further back, in a one battle, King Arthur managed to kill 470 Saxons with his own sword and emerge unscathed. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 11:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

No, no, nothing so moderate. Geoffrey of Monmouth reduced that figure from the 960 men he found in his source, or more likely the numeral D (500) got left out and an extra X got added somewhere in the manuscript transmission. Roman numerals normally seem to get corrupted in that sort of way after a chain of tired monks have copied them. --Antiquary (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, I wonder if the limp of The Brute was a mythological reference to the Achilles' heel. Viriditas (talk) 23:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

See our article on overthinking :-) Alansplodge (talk) 10:58, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

When I watched The Matrix I couldn't believe that humans work as electric generators. The bullet time and such effects were good but it seemed a big plot hole. I didn't watch the following sequels. --Error (talk) 01:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't a documentary. It was entertainment. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Nevertheless, entertainment that jolts the viewers out of their suspension of disbelief by an obvious absurdity is not well written. I too noticed this at the time, thought it silly, and have not bothered to watch the sequels.

I have a theory that makers of Hollywood-level 'Sci-Fi' films (and TV) have read Science Fiction in their teens, when it was less well developed as a literary form, but not subsequently because they were too busy with their general careers: consequently, when they come to make science-fiction films, they model them on the older, inferior standards they remember. If their competitors are doing the same, they all form a 'bubble of unsophistication'. To my perception (as an aged written SF & Fantasy fan), film and TV SF&F usually (though not invariably) lag a few decades behind the written forms in quality of (screen)writing. This even applies to many film versions of literarily successful novels and stories, which get unnecessarily 'disimproved' by screenwriters who overestimate their own abilities. [/rant]. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 12:58, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Could well be. And I recall Siskel and Ebert talking about what they called the "idiot plot", in which the premise is so absurd that the audience can't fully buy into it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)