August 19

Better Than News

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  Free Squishy is a 1993 American family cephalopod film about an orphaned boy who befriends a captive octopus at a secret military research facility until a dark secret reveals the CIA's plan to use Squishy as a genetically engineered assassin.

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  Dances with Na'vi is an epic science fiction Western film directed by Kevin Costner and James Cameron, starring Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, and Sigourney Weaver.

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  Singapore Sling Blade is a 1996 American comedy-action film about an Arkansas bartender (Billy Bob Thornton) who challenges himself to "invent the most foreign cocktail ever seen in these parts."

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  Mattock is a landscape architecture legal drama television series starring Andy Griffith.

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  Tubular Elves is a short documentary film about how the album Tubular Bells accidentally recorded machine elves during UK military submarine communication tests.

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  Jungian Charms is an alleged breakfast cereal which manifests the user's shadow self.

Beyond Plausible

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  Schindler's Lust is an epic historical drama mystery suspense thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and Steven Spielberg.

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  The Final Pencil is an educational standardized testing horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

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  The Shop of Things to Come is a science fiction consumer society novel by British writer H. G. Wells about a future shopping expedition which ends in madness, death, and the Final Checkout.

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  "Someone Sank My Battleship" is a song by Elton John and Milton Bradley.

In Other Words

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  Spray Bactine for Me is a 1971 American psychological thriller film about a radio disc jockey (Clint Eastwood) who is stalked by an obsessed nurse (Jessica Walter).

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  "My Oilier Longings" is an anagram of "Losing My Religion".

Are You Sure

... that the 2015 Toledo giant red ball incident (nonfiction) is non-fictional?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1662: Mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal dies. Pacal did pioneering work on calculating machines.

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  1758: Jean-Étienne Montucla received the censor's approbation for his Histoire des mathematiques, which is justly famous as a history of the mathematical sciences.

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  1822: Mathematician and astronomer Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre dies. He was one of the first astronomers to derive astronomical equations from analytical formulas.

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  1906: Inventor Philo Farnsworth born. He will make many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television.

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  1913: Computer scientist, engineer, and academic John Argyris born. A pioneer of computer applications in science and engineering, Argyris will be among the creators of the finite element method.

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  1923: Engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto dies. He applied mathematics to economic analysis, asserting that the distribution of incomes and wealth in society is not random and that a consistent pattern appears throughout history, in all parts of the world and in all societies.

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  1967: Inventor, writer, editor, and publisher Hugo Gernsback dies. He published the first science fiction magazine, and had a profound influence on the development of science fiction.

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  1993: Actor-cryptographer Niles Cartouchian confirms that he personally designed the computational security protocols featured in the action-adventure film Dard Hunter, Glyph Warden.

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  1994: Chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator Linus Pauling dies.

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  2015: A giant red ball breaks loose from an art installation and rolls down the street in Toledo, Ohio.

Topic of the Day

Books

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  June is a novel by Frank Herbert 1.1 (as told to OrbGazer). (A HAL 9000 Mental Health Associates Book of the Month selection.)

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  Crate Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens about Pip, an orphan boy whose apprenticeship as a carpenter leads to fame and fortune in the box-making trade.