Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 September 4

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September 4

What would cause a bump on the head similar to the one Sharif Atkins has?

What would cause a bump on the head similar to the one Sharif Atkins has? Currently playing Jones in White Collar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.186.192.134 (talk) 01:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I have looked at a batch of pics online and do not see a bump so I am guessing that it is either an accident that happened in real life just before filming the episode that you watched or it is part of the storyline and the makeup crew put it there to match the plot. Hopefully someone else who watches the show will be able to fill you in. MarnetteD|Talk 02:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

In general, bumps on the head are hematomas. I've never heard of the show or the actor, so I can't say that was the case here. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(I added links to the OP. I haven't seen the bump myself.) § When I first sought medical advice about a lump in my leg, the quack told me it was a lipoma, like the bump on his own scalp, which was hemispherical, maybe an inch across. I eventually learned that his advice to me was bad, so maybe he was wrong about his own bump too. —Tamfang (talk) 07:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Gracie Allen

Every time I edit the Gracie Allen page, someone changes it back. I'm not very good at editing wiki pages so I keep messing up how to cite my source. Gracie Allen was born in 1902, it says so right on her head stone ( findagrave.com) yet a source from a genealogy website claims she was born in 1895 or 1896. Please change this. I mean its not like it's really that big of a deal but it's false information. George burns even writes about her birthday in the book 'Gracie: A Love Story', and how her original birth certificate was destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake in 1906 when she was about 4 years old. That genealogy website is wrong. Please look into this and fix it once and for all! Thanks for the help and have a great day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.87.112.195 (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The article has a section devoted to the birth date controversy and mentions the date on the grave stone, but concludes that the US Census data is more reliable. If you think that the lede and infobox should show 1902 as her birth year, the article's talk page Talk:Gracie Allen would be the place to discuss it.--Wikimedes (talk) 08:51, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Note that entertainers often fake their ages. At the beginning of their career, they may pretend they are older than they are, to get work, and later they may pretend to be younger than they are. StuRat (talk) 14:09, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Definitely. As an example look at the talk page of Elisabeth Sladen. That was an interesting bunfight. Britmax (talk) 12:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Ethical implications of doing polygraph testing on paternity

Has anybody written about the ethical implications of doing polygraph testing on the paternity of a man to a child? There are TV talk shows, where people would just do "paternity testing" in addition to "taking the lie detector test". What would happen if a man really did not cheat on his wife, but the polygraph test showed the signs of a lie? What if the man had been cheating but was just "good at lying"? 140.254.226.218 (talk) 16:28, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The lack of reliability of lie detector tests poses ethical problems, no matter what they are used for, if you take the results to be the truth. In short, we need lie detectors that don't lie. StuRat (talk) 16:42, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Name of comic book sought

In the 1980s or 1990s, I read a comic book called Lohikäärme Puff ja paratiisihedelmät ("Puff the Dragon and the paradise fruits") in Finnish. It was about a family of anthropomorphic dragons, and the father (called Puff) had got a business idea of trying to sell a crate-load of exotic fruits called "aoxomoxoa". The only problem was that no one knew anything about the fruits and they tasted bad, so no one ever bought any. Then a family of anthropomorphic black birds from the same country as the fruits came from moved next door to the dragon family, and it was revealed that the father of the black bird family was the ambassador of his home country. He showed Puff that aoxomoxoas have to be cooked to taste good. That's all I remember. What is the original name of this comic? Where does it come from? Have there even been any other issues than this aoxomoxoa issue? JIP | Talk 18:49, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Possibly the Danish Familien Gnuff series , specifically Nr. 4 - Gribedyrets hemmelighed? ---Sluzzelin talk 19:15, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. A Google search confirms it's the same comic book series. I'm not sure about the individual issue, but those black birds on the cover do seem to match those I remember. How many issues were there? Does anyone know whether this one was the only one translated to Finnish or not? JIP | Talk 19:23, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This is the result of searching for Familien Gnuff at the Grand Comics Database. I don't see anything Finnish in there, mostly Danish and Norwegian, but the search function is notoriously tricky on that site. Have a look through the results and/or play with the spelling and you may find what you're looking for. They do try to be thorough. I searched for Lohikäärme Puff ja paratiisihedelmät, but it came up with nothing (but again, the search function can be a pain). Matt Deres (talk) 11:59, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Well there you go. The only time I'd ever come across "aoxomoxoa" is as per our article. You learn something every day. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:22, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The Finns do a good line in palindromes, e.g. saippuakuppinippukauppias, soap dish wholesale vendor. Right, User:JIP? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes, sort of. Your example word is a good example of this. To clarify for non-Finnish-speakers, it's a compound word, consisting of saippua-kuppi-nippu-kauppias. "Nippu" means "bundle", but in this case the word might be understood as meaning a wholesale vendor. The radio show Alivaltiosihteeri often features long, innovative palindromes. JIP | Talk 13:41, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, is there any language-based reason the family couldn't have kept its name in Finnish? I get the "Puff, the Magic Dragon" reference, but supposedly that's what had inspired Freddy Milton, Gnuff's creator, to name him Gnuff in the first place. A parodistic reference, if you like. Would Gnuff not work in Finnish, for some reason? (added a few minutes later: Of course there might be a Danish pun involved that I don't get, and likewise a Finnish one. I just learned that puff! can mean poof! (interjection) in Finnish). ---Sluzzelin talk 23:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The only reason I can think of is that Finnish doesn't use word-initiative consonant clusters (although Finns are still capable of pronouncing them). JIP | Talk 15:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, JIP. I didn't know that about Finnish (and never noticed it while reading Finnish signs and product labels in dumb awe). ---Sluzzelin talk 19:10, 10 September 2014 (UTC)