In Doctor Strange (film), Tilda Swinton appears with no hair; I noticed scars, one of which looks as if a surgeon folded most of her scalp away. Or maybe the scars are makeup intended to hint at the Ancient One's anciency. Anyone know if she has had head surgery? (A search for tilda swinton surgery turned up only speculation about facelifts and the like.) —Tamfang (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's makeup for the role - see [1] (googled tilda swinton scars). Nanonic (talk) 07:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I am trying to understand baseball - which is full of jargon that at present I have not found definitions for. It may be that the answers to my questions are in the article baseball, but I have only read that as far as diagram

which although claiming to be a full and complete diagram is missing vast swathes of information.

On that diagram, what is the size of the diamond - it isn't marked - and is that from the centre of a base to the centre, or is it from edge to nearest edge? How big is a base? What shape is a base? Is the pitchers mound in the centre of the diamond? What is the plectrum shaped thing in what I presume is the home base (unlabeled)? How big is the home base? Where does the running batter have to reach to have reached home (achieved a run)? How high is the pitcher's mound and does it have a prescribed shape? If the outfield is grass and the infield is dirt, what material is the diamond? What does "distance can vary from 290' to 400 to fence" mean - will an outfield delimited by a fence be within the range 290 - 400 or may it be outside that range - smaller? larger? And lastly is the diamond actually a square with 90 degree corners? -- SGBailey (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Bases are square. The thing in the center of the pitcher's mound is the pitching rubber. The "plectrum" thing is home base. Home base is roughly the same size on the non-pointy sides as one of the bases. The batter must touch home base (the white plectrum bit) in order to score a run. The brown bits are dirt. The green bits are all grass. The bases are usually white canvas. The distance varying means exactly that. Not all of the outfield fences are the same distance from home base. Not even in the same park. The right, center, and left field fences can be different distances from home plate. And yes, the diamond is 90' on a side, square. †dismas†|^(talk) 00:58, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Oh, and to add more confusion to this whole thing... The outfield fences can be very tall! Take Fenway Park which is a great example of this and the distance to the fences. As it states in our article, the distance to the left field fence is 310'. Center is 389'9". And right field is 302'. But then in left field you have the Green Monster. The left field "fence" is a wall which is 37'2" tall. Meanwhile the right and center fences are much shorter. †dismas†|^(talk) 01:20, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

And finally, much of this is covered at Baseball rules#General structure. †dismas†|^(talk) 01:22, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

• The article Baseball field also covers the dimensions in exhaustive detail. Regarding the outfield wall dimensions, This diagram shows the outfield wall dimensions for all Major League Baseball fields. The history of stadium design is varied; in the early history of baseball, there were no outfield fences, most "stadiums" were just a field with some bleachers on either side. It wasn't until the early 1900s that the first outfield walls were put on stadiums, mostly for fan safety (in the pre-wall era, fans would picnic in the outfield, and players would have to contend with them as any other obstacle). When the first concrete-and-steel modern urban stadiums were constructed in the 1910s and 1920s, they were often wedged into city blocks and the shape of the field was what would fit in the available space. Only Fenway Park and Wrigley Field remain from this era, most of these stadiums had quirky, odd-shaped outfields, from the long-and-skinny Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan to Philadelphia's oddly asymmetric Baker Bowl, to DC's Griffith Stadium, whose outfield wall had a bewildering array of angles and crenelations. When teams moved to the expansive west and to the suburbs in the 1950s-1970s, we got the era of the "Giant Ashtray" stadiums: large, bland, behemoths like Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium and Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium with their astroturf surfaces and their perfectly symmetrical lines and symmetrical playing surface. The 1980s-1990s ushered in the "Retro" ballparks, which had the amenities expected of modern stadiums with the classic "charms" of the earlier era, like Camden Yards in Baltimore and San Francisco's AT&T Park. --Jayron32 01:54, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Actually watching a game might answer a lot of your questions about game play. †dismas†|^(talk) 02:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I would suggest watching highlights before watching a full game. Anyone not familiar with bat-and-ball games might find it very confusing. Once the OP understands what's happening in the highlights (how runs are scored and how outs are made, he'll be in better position to watch a full game.

The diagram's failure to show the distance between bases is a major gaffe on somebody's part. My PC doesn't allow work with SVG's, so someone else should fix it.

Many of the OP's queries have been answered. To reiterate and elaborate somewhat:

• What is the size of the diamond? Is the diamond actually a square with 90 degree corners? -- Yes, it's a square 90 feet on each side.
• Is that from the centre of a base to the centre, or is it from edge to nearest edge? -- Conceptually the base are the points forming the corners. Second base is centered on its point. The other three are positioned "inside" the square. That keeps the base markers totally in fair territory.
• How big is a base? What shape is a base? What is the plectrum shaped thing in what I presume is the home base (unlabeled)? How big is the home base? -- First, second and third base are square "bags" 15 inches on a side and several inches high. Home base (or plate) is rubber, basically 12 inches per side plus those two triangles which turn it into a five-sided object. Home was originally square too, and the two triangles were added because it was thought it would better help the umpire judge balls and strikes.
• Is the pitchers mound in the centre of the diamond? -- Not quite. The rules specify the diagonal corners as being 127 feet 3 and 3/8 inches, which is very close to 90 times the square root of 2. So the exact center of the 90 foot square, if my arithmetic is correct, would be 63 feet 7 and 11 / 16 inches. The distance from the point of home plate to the near edge of the pitcher's plate is 60 feet 6 inches. The history behind that seemingly peculiar number would take another paragraph to explain.
• Where does the running batter have to reach to have reached home (achieved a run)? -- Any part of his body touching a base constitutes having reached the base. Typically feet or hands.
• How high is the pitcher's mound and does it have a prescribed shape? -- The rules are very specific about the maximum height of the pitcher's plate (the "rubber") and about the slope in the front of the mound.
• If the outfield is grass and the infield is dirt, what material is the diamond? -- Grass also. Note that the shapes of the dirt/grass lines are suggestions rather than absolutes.
• What does "distance can vary from 290' to 400 to fence" mean - will an outfield delimited by a fence be within the range 290 - 400 or may it be outside that range - smaller? larger? -- That factoid is misleading. The rules specify minimum distances of 325 feet along the foul lines (which, by the way, are in fair territory) and 400 feet to straightaway centerfield. However, a given league can grant a team the right to have shorter distances, for example in San Francisco where the right field line is only 309. For high school it can be closer. The absolute minimum at the professional level is 250. If part of a fence is less than 250, a ball hit over it is a ground rule double instead of a home run. Professional ball fields have always been enclosed, so they can charge admission and not have "freeloaders" watching. The first enclosed field was built in 1862.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:37, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Compromising on my comment above, here's a video of the top of the 10th inning of the final game of the recent World Series.[2] See if you can follow it, and get back to us with any questions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:02, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

One extra note on the excellent summary by Bugs above is that the diamond itself can vary in designs. The one shown in the diagram is fairly standard for the professional level, but there is a lot of variation. see here and here and here and here and here. You can see from those images that there's different designs for the dirt areas and the grass/turf areas. --Jayron32 09:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

The evolution of the "skinned" portions of the diamond includes Boston's South End Grounds in the 1880s, which shows the early tradition of minimal dirt paths between bases and at infielders normal stations, while Chicago's West Side Park in 1906 had the more familiar umbrella-shaped grass lines. Except for the wide dirt path between home and the mound (and beyond), the field looks very much like the typical major league field of today. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

In Octopussy, were the octopus tattoos on Magda and Octopussy intended as an oblique reference to SPECTRE (which could not be mentioned directly for copyright reasons), or was it just a coincidence? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:80FF:78F0:F6E8:3CE2 (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

When, if ever, did Fleming specify an octopus as SPECTRE's logo? And when did that logo first appear in the films? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:46, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

In this here clip from "From Russia With Love", you can't really see because of the lousy resolution, but Blofeld is definitely wearing his ring with the octopus logo -- which shows that it was SPECTRE's symbol almost from the beginning of the series. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:80FF:78F0:F6E8:3CE2 (talk) 07:19, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

You might be best off to bring this up at a James Bond forum site. They might have some leads on what was in the minds of the creators of the "Octopussy" film. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:34, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Agreed, but I have to think that the point of the octopus tattoos was to reference Octopussy herself, a characters so named in the original story, before rights issues reared their head. I never read Thunderball, so I can't comment as to whether SPECTRE had an octopus design from the beginning. Matt Deres (talk) 17:15, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

So, no connections between Dexter Smythe and SPECTRE? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:4194:43D8:DAB4:1C6C (talk) 03:05, 3 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

If neither the book nor the movie claim a connection, then there isn't one. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:51, 3 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

There are also screen captures of octopus rings for Fiona Volpe in Thunderball (1965) and Marco Sciarra in Spectre (2015) in the James Bond wiki entry for SPECTRE, as well as a big image at the top of the article. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I'm a "casual" fan of Star Wars, not geeky about it. What is the proper narrative chronology of the movies? The films were not made in the "correct" order, some later films cover events that predate earlier films. The "Episode" numbers don't make much sense to me. If I want to watch the whole set of movies should I do so in the order they were published or would the narrative sequence be easier to follow? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:16, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

The Star Wars episode numbers give the in-universe chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The release order is episode 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 7. Rogue One opening this month has no episode number but takes place between episode 3 and 4. Star Wars fans can be a bit obsessive and there are different opinions about the best viewing order. See for example [3] or try to Google Star Wars viewing order. Some recommend the Machete Order: 4, 5, 2, 3, 6 (skipping 1, named before 7 was announced). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:06, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

You've forgotten the Holiday Special which was released between ep 4 & 5. I know of dedicated Star Wars fans who deny it's existance, but I saw it on the TV when it first transmitted. Put me off Star Wars for life, not that I was a huge fan of the first film which I also saw in 1977. --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:43, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I know from personal experience that it's best saved for the last part of a marathon, but only if you are watching a marathon with other people. The holiday special is not something you watch, it's something you make Star Wars fans who haven't heard of it watch so you can watch their reactions. Kinda like telling dead baby jokes... on an evangelical forum... after sorting out which ones don't actually violate any of the site's rules... Ian.thomson (talk) 16:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

And, if you can find it, C-3PO conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra in a medley of Star Wars music. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:52, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Well, if we're going to include TV specials, then there is not one, but two Ewok movies to include as well; Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. They aren't good, but they're better than the Holiday Special. Once you get into the "expanded universe" stuff (i.e. what is outside of the cinematic movies) it gets bloated and convoluted. There's actually two distinct canons for this; there's what is now called Star Wars Legends, which is all of the material that was part of the OLD LucasFilm canon, and which was actually meticulously maintained (see Holocron) so as to avoid major continuity errors (but is HUGE, with books, TV series, video games, comics, etc.) and the modern Star Wars canon, which was basically "reset" after Disney completed its purchase of Star Wars from Lucas, and dumped everything except the core Episode 1-6 films, one animated film, and two TV series. So, before one gets deep into the Star Wars Legendarium, one needs to decide which canon one wishes to commit too. The old, now retired canon has some really good stories (the Timothy Zahn Thrawn trilogy and Ann C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy are notably pretty good) and some really bad ones as well; but remember that those works will not have any continuity with the any forthcoming films (i.e. the Thrawn books take place pretty much contemporaneous with the current sequel trilogy, episodes 7-9, and the Han Solo Trilogy is not being used to inform the planned 2018 Han Solo origin story). --Jayron32 18:58, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

WP:NOR (though I'm sure I could find blogs making each argument), but: If you watch them in episode order, the "big surprise" of 5 has less impact (though since you're a fan, no matter how casual, you already know what it is). If you watch them in release order, the tragedy of 3 is rather lost as you see it coming three movies ago, but the redemption in 6 makes more sense. 7 seems more or less made to be viewed either before or after the other 6, though from what I've seen here in China, it doesn't have as much of an effect if you haven't seen any of the others. Ian.thomson (talk) 12:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Excellent point. Also, the production values of Empire ("Episode V") and the relative depth of some of the plot elements led critics to rave about it, despite its implied "to be continued" at the end. Of course, the viewer would have to see 4 before seeing 5, or 5 wouldn't make a lot of sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:23, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I am also a "casual" fan, having seen most of them only once. I recommend them in production order, so that you can see how each one built on (or was derived from) the previous ones. If you can find the original, un-tinkered with film (later called Episode IV), you can see what they started with, and can perhaps imagine why it was such a sensation at the time, as well as establishing the formula for the series. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:20, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

The correct order to watch them is Blue Harvest, then Something, Something, Something, Dark Side and finally It's a Trap!. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 18:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

That last one seems fishy.

And let's not forget Hardware Wars. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:53, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

It's a Trap! was so bad it came with a warning at the beginning that they'd run out of jokes. Why they haven't shown that at the beginning of every episode since about season 8 is a mystery for another day. Matt Deres (talk) 02:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Recommended order: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens. That is to say: ignore the prequels (they add nothing to the story and are mostly bad). Try to get hold of the original theatrical releases (or at least the early re-releases) rather than the special editions, which spoil more than they improve.Iapetus (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Actually, if you haven't seen the original in a while, I recommend Googling star wars revisited to obtain the best version of A New Hope that exists. Don't let the "fan edit" tag fool you and have a look at the previews all over YouTube; the DVDs are of superior quality to what's been passed off as "Blu-Ray" and many of Lucas' most egregious blunders have been seamlessly removed. Matt Deres (talk) 02:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Like the part where Obi-Wan said that Darth Vader had murdered Luke's father? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Well, that's what happened, from a certain point of view. --Jayron32 18:48, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Right, from the point of view of not-having-written-the-sequel's-script-yet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

what was the first First-person video games?--2001:B07:6463:31EE:39DC:CEF7:1892:5CAC (talk) 16:23, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Per the article, either Spasim or Maze War. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:36, 4 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

A post has been made at Talk:1913 European Bandy Championships about whether the 1913 European Bandy Championships really happened, refering to this page: [4]. I don't know what to think. Who are the "prominent hockey historians" who are said to have been researching the matter? Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 20:54, 5 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

The site you link to has a talk option - you might be more likely to get an answer by raising the question there. This is a very obscure subject, and I doubt you will get much joy here. Wymspen (talk) 10:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

I actually didn't see there was a talk option there. Thanks for pointing it out. And sports history is not that obscure, more nerdy. :-) Snowsuit Wearer (talk|contribs) 23:51, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

New York Golden Blades says that when the World Hockey Association wanted to put a team (originally known as the New York Raiders) in the New York area in its first season, "The team was initially slated to play in the brand-new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island. However, Nassau County didn't consider the WHA a major league and wanted nothing to do with the Raiders." This is uncited. The Nassau Coliseum did manage to secure a team in the National Hockey League instead, the New York Islanders. That article says, "County officials did not consider the WHA a major league and wanted to keep the Raiders out. However, they discovered that they couldn't legally lock out the Raiders until they persuaded an NHL team to play there." That's cited to http://www.whahockey.com/raiders.html -- although that source doesn't say anything about the county wanting to keep a supposedly minor-league WHA team out of their arena, nor that they would need to have an NHL team to legally prevent the WHA team from playing there. So there isn't any source provided in either article for the county's antipathy toward having a WHA team in their arena.

And it doesn't make sense to me, either. How would it have been against the county's interests to have another tenant in their arena, paying rent for 40 home games a year? Before the Islanders were formed, the Coliseum had only one regular tenant, the New York Nets, and after spending $32 million building the arena, I would think that the county would have wanted to get as much use out of it as possible. Of course, having an NHL team would have been more desirable than having a WHA team, but that didn't mean that a WHA team should have been shunned. After all, Madison Square Garden managed to be the home arena for the WHA's Raiders while already serving the NHL's New York Rangers (albeit on unfavorable terms for the Raiders). And Boston Garden, Maple Leaf Gardens, and Pacific Coliseum also managed to have both NHL and WHA teams simultaneously at various times as well. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

• It also doesn't say that having an NHL team would "legally lock out" a WHA team from using the arena. --76.71.5.45 (talk) 09:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

  If it is not in the source, remove the statement entirely. If it can't be proven, and it seems like bullshit to you, it's probably bullshit. If someone comes along later with a reliable source, they can show their source so we can add it back in later. --Jayron32 18:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Me and my friend are having a huge argument about it, so I just decided to ask here:

Which band wrote more songs, The Beatles or The Who? Covers of songs by other bands don't count, nor do individual records (like Imagine by John Lennon). I'm pretty sure the answer is The Who, but my friend is insistent that The Beatles wrote more. Can someone clarify the answer for us so the argument can end? UN$¢_Łuke_1Ø21^Repørts 19:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Category:Songs written by Lennon–McCartney lists 193 songs; while they were the primary songwriters for the Beatles, there were a few written by George Harrison (roughly 2 per album), which gives another 20 or so songs, and at least one song Flying (Beatles instrumental), credited to all 4 songs. That gives us 215ish songs. Category:Songs written by Pete Townshend, the primary songwriter for The Who, only has 132 songs in it; throw in a few dozen by other members, and that's still less than 200. Plus, we'd have to pull out all of the Solo songs Townsend did. The Beatles win. --Jayron32 20:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

For comparison, there are also List of songs recorded by the Beatles and List of songs recorded by The Who (both of which include songs that do not have their own article on WP and thus aren't included in the categories). I currently don't have what it takes to make an exact count on each list (excluding the covers of songs by other bands etc.). ---Sluzzelin talk 23:19, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Apparently I don't even have what it takes to read beyond the first sentence. The second sentence of the Beatles list: "There are a total of 409 songs listed on this page, with 172 of them being cover songs and 237 being original compositions.". The Who's list still would need to be counted though. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:31, 6 December 2016 (UTC)Reply