November 18

Better Than News

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  Restricted Airspace is an American musical fantasy thriller film starring Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins, an arms dealer with supernatural powers who visits a dysfunctional military contractor in London and employs her unique brand of leverage to improve the corporation's income.

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  The In Your Dreams Tour was a world concert tour by author Alan Moore and musician Robert Plant.

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  Ghost Harley and the Way of the Marlboro Man is a 1999 crime film about "Ghost Harley" (Forest Whitaker), a hitman whose faith is shaken by visions of a smoking dog after accepting a contract on Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson).

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  The Bourne Late Fee is an action film about a CIA librarian who suffers from amnesia.

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  One Flew Over the Matrix Nest is a 1975 American psychological comedy science fiction film about Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a new patient at a virtual mental institution.

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  Pulp Fremen is a 1994 crime drama film about Spacer Guild navigator (Ving Rhames) who is kidnapped by Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and held for ransom.

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  Perry Rhodan of Gor is a German-American space opera franchise, named after its hero and the world he conquers, one woman at a time.

Beyond Plausible

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  Caramel Knowledge is a 1971 American comedy-drama film which follows the candy-eating exploits of two Amherst College roommates (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) over a 25-year period.

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  The Super-Hungry Parasite is a children's picture book starring a polymorphic alien organism which demonstrates a wide range of parasitic behaviors, eating its way through a variety of hosts before pupating and emerging as [REDACTED].

In Other Words

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  1659: In a letter to Pope Alexander VII, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens declares that proposals to flood the Sistine Chapel "are equally useless to Science and Art alike."

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  The Gift of the Bene Gesserit is a 2021 short science fiction film by Denis Villeneuve based on the short story of the same name by Frank Herbert and O. Henry.

Are You Sure

• ... that physicist Johannes Bosscha Jr. (18 November 1831 – 15 April 1911) conducted pioneering research on galvanic polarization and the rapidity of sound waves; and that Bosscha was one of the first (1855) to suggest the possibility of sending two messages simultaneously over the same wire?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1724: Inventor and priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão dies.

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  1831: Physicist Johannes Bosscha Jr. born. He will make important investigations on galvanic polarization and the rapidity of sound waves; he will be one of the first (1855) to suggest the possibility of sending two messages simultaneously over the same wire.

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  1865: Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in The Saturday Press.

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  1959: Mathematician and academic Aleksandr Khinchin dies. He was one of the founders of modern probability theory.

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  1962: Physicist and philosopher Niels Bohr born. He will make foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

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  2013: NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson celebrates fourth anniversary of NASA launching the MAVEN probe to Mars.

Topic of the Day

Elvis Costello

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  Truss is a 1981 album by Elvis Costello and the Constructions

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  Mayan is True is the debut studio album by English singer, songwriter, and Mesoamerican archaeologist Elvis Costello.