Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007 November 26

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November 26

Null day

Nothing entertaining today! hydnjo talk 16:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

All fixed, thanks Ummit. hydnjo talk 02:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Greatest greatest hits

Which artist has released the most Greatest hits-style albums? For example, Kylie Minogue has (according to Kylie Minogue discography), depending on how you count it, somewhere between 2 and 10 Greatest hits/budget release compilation albums, plus a bunch of "Greatest hits remix" albums. But can anyone beat her? Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd put my money on Elvis Presley. Every other month there's a new "greatest hits" album peddled on late night TV.--droptone (talk) 12:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Do the millions of repackaged Beethoven and Mozart albums count? -- kainaw™ 20:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

No, because they're composers, not artists. I'd be interested in seeing what a "Best of Bach" would actually comprise, though. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 22:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Best of Bach? take a look. -- kainaw™ 23:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I should have known better than pick that as a probably non-existant record. I notice that they haven't yet produced the follow-up album, "Most of Mozart". Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:12, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I always thought KISS had the most. --Ouzo (talk) 23:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Elvis will probably have him beat, but just doing a quick count, I came up with 27 for Tom Jones. Yes, he is still alive, still recording and still touring (before anyone asks). ````"SnoopyDd"````

record holder

i recently got hold of an encyclopedia and it had a few general questions,one was i hold a record for turning pro at 10 who am i n in what sport.am still researching but am not sure who it is.any help wud be much appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.87.86 (talk) 14:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There was a boxer named Pittman who turned pro when he was 10. I remember the name because of the Buccaneers player Micheal Pittman and the kids age because there was a thing on ESPN asking if it was OK for a 10 year old to take punches to the head from adult boxers. I did a Google search, but I only turned up hundreds of pages about the football player. I wanted to verify that the kid was actually "pro" when he was 10 and that he actually fought in some pro boxing matches. -- kainaw™ 18:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Boxing Encyclopedia mentions Mexican boxer Alberto "Baby" Arizmendi as "perhaps the youngest person ever to have become a professional boxer; he turned pro at the ripe old age of 13, although some swore he was only seven when he had his first pro fight" (source: Ring Magazine, May 1982). The only Pittman featured in that encyclopedia is Australian Jamie "Mr. Business" Pittman who doesn't seem to fit the record. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:46, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Manga recommendations

I'm a life-long comic book and graphic novel reader. I'm pretty selective about what I read, I much prefer to read European and American "grown-up" stuff, the Frank Miller and Alan Moores of the world, as well as many things more obscure. When it comes to manga, I've never really liked it all that much. It's not like I haven't read anything, I plowed through Akira, Lone Wolf and Cub, Nausicaä and a few others in my youth, but it never really appealed to me the way western comics did. This predjudice has only been reinforced in the last few years of the manga explosion where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Dragon Ball Z or Sailor Moon poster (the dead cat probably has it's own manga imprint by now). However, while perusing my local comic book store, I found a copy of the Old Boy manga, and, being a fan of the movie, I picked it up. I absolutely love it! I totally hard-boiled crime story for people over the age of 16! I couldn't believe it! It has totally turned me around on the whole genre. So, therefore, I ask for recommendations. What mangas are there out there (in English) that a grown-up and sophisticated reader such as myself might find interesting? 213.112.18.120 (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a specialist WikiProject for anime and manga, called (cunningly) WikiProject Anime and manga. You would probably get the best response by asking the project experts on their discussion page. Neil ☎ 09:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Celebrity Birthdays

Is there any credible / reliable way for someone to go about finding the "official" (real / true) birthday of a celebrity? (In other words, not just "what the such and such web site says" ... a web site can say anything, and that hardly makes it true, real, or official.) Would their agents / managers / publicity staff distribute that information, if you called and asked? If you called the Town Hall of their birthplace, would the Town Hall officials be required to disclose such "public information"? In particular, there is some discrepancy with Cuba Gooding, Jr. -- that is, whether he was born on January or September the 2nd of 1968 (in the Bronx, New York). Different web sites say different things. Even if he had an "official web site" (which he does not seem to have) ... that in and of itself would not really be an official source. With his being born so "recently" (relatively speaking) --- I would think that this would be an open-and-shut case with no cause for discrepancy. Any suggestions? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC))

Well apart from an 'official' website surely being 'official' I would expect that your most reliable source online would be IMDB? They have a 'pro' section which is paid-for and whilst that isn't a guarantee I would expect this means they are used by agencies/others to get their information and so quite reliable. The site is also owned by Amazon so perhaps that link adds credibility to their data. ny156uk (talk) 23:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, IMDb allows simply anyone (like you or I) to enter any information into its database --- and it does not seem like a particularly rigorous screening process at all to filter the information they receive and post. Perhaps it's the "best" that we have out there ... but it is certainly not very reliable / trustworthy / "official" ... I would think. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC))

The only bullet-proof way to find out something like that is getting a copy of the birth certificate, and yes, they would have to give it to you if you asked (because of the Freedom Of Information Act). It's public information. 213.112.18.52 (talk) 23:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that City Hall officials are required to disclose birth certificates to the general public? A quick review of the New York City web site (click here ---> [1]) makes it seem like you can only get either your own or your children's birth certificates ... and not anyone else's just because you want it ... (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC))

It appears that you may be right, I spoke to soon. I was assuming that FOIA applied in the US the same it does where I live, and I guess there is an exemption or something (or maybe it's a state/federal thing). I guess one would have to try ones luck in court or something (and probably lose, I imagine this already has come up and there is proper precedent). I apologise 213.112.18.120 (talk) 01:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

No problem. It does seem like these are "public records" and that they provide "public information" ... thus, I can't see why the public should not have access to them ... ? I will have to look into it. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC))

213, I'm not sure where you are, but most FOI acts exempt "personally identifiable information" such as birth certificates (for example, in the UK, this is covered by the Data Protection Act, which trumps the UK's FoI Act). You cannot just demand information that reveals people's personal information, as their right to have their own information protected outweighs your right to have free and open access to it. Neil ☎ 09:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Neil - where are you, in the United States? How can it be that births, deaths, marriages, etc. are not public records and not available to the public? These items (births, deaths, marriages, etc.) would seem to me to be the very epitome of the definition of "public records", no? I can't imagine that in the USA in 2007, government officials are allowed to "keep secret" such vital events and/or the documentation surrounding them. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC))

I'm in the UK. In order to gain access to your own (full) birth certificate via the registry office, you must first prove your identity, presumably to deter identity fraud. You are not permitted to gain unrestricted access to anyone else's. The UK's General Register Office will only release such information if it is necessary to conform with a legal requirement, or if they consider a certificate application is being made fraudulently. Dates and basic information (name, town/city) of births/deaths/marriage are publically available, however, as this is not considered "personally-identifiable information" (not quite sure how that was decided). Neil ☎ 11:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is no single fount of all such knowledge. The only truly authoritative source for a birthday is the person's birth certificate, and even they have been known to be wrong. And birth certificates have only been around relatively recently, historically speaking, so that wouldn't work for many 18th century people or earlier. Baptism certificates were the go back then; but not everyone was baptised, and even where they were, it came down to the competence of the priest in getting the dates right. A good example is Frederic Chopin: all the evidence strongly suggests he was born on 1 March 1810; but there are those who hold a candle for 22 February, because that's the (believed to be erroneous) birth date the priest wrote on his baptism certificate. We'll never really, really know with 100% certainty either way. The only truly, truly authoritative source is someone who was present at the birth (which would not usually include the mother, who had other more pressing things on her mind than wondering about the date or time it was happening). Where the birth occurred close to midnight, the reliable witness would also need to have had an accurate watch. In the majority of cases, such witnesses are dead. Most reference works (including IMDB) do not actually check the birth certificates of their subjects, but rely on what they believe to be the most authoritative date shown in other sources. We do the same here. All the above also applies to the date of death and other important events in the person's life. One writer who didn't rely on secondary sources but went to extraordinary lengths to dig out the actual birth, baptism and death certificates was Nicolas Slonimsky. His researches resulted in literally thousands of previously accepted dates for musicians and composers being corrected. One case in point was Sergei Prokofiev, who, according to his own belief and all the reference books, was born on 23 April 1891, and always celebrated his birthday on that date. He died in 1953. In the early 1980s, a baptism certificate came to light that showed he had in fact been born on 27 April, and that date now appears in credible references. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)