August 13

Better Than News

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  CSI: Antikythera Mechanism is an archaeology procedural forensics crime drama television series about a team of detectives who use the Antikythera mechanism to solve crimes.

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  Voyage to the Eternal Sunshine of the Bottomless Sea is a 2004 romantic science fiction thriller film which uses elements of submarine warfare, claustrophobic tension, and a nonlinear need-to-know mission which explores the topography and marine life of the ocean floor.

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  The Prisoner is a children's psychological drama television series hosted by Bob Keeshan and co-hosted by Patrick McGoohan.

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  The Man Who Mistook His Wife for The Prisoner is a 1985 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing the case histories of some of his patients who have extraordinary relationships with the British television series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.

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  Battle Racket is a 1996 war drama film by Wes Anderson, starring Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, and James Caan.

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  Ionic Bondi Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, famed for its chemical bonding, both the bonding of oppositely charged ions, and the bonding of two atoms with sharply different electronegativities.

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  What Lies Beneath is a 2022 American supernatural art thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michelle Pfeiffer Vincent and van Gogh as a couple who live on a haunted potato farm.

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  If God Loves Me So Much Then Why is Spirit Halloween Not Year-Round? is a set of devotionals for Halloween worship.

Are You Sure

... that the volume of blood in the human body is approximately the volume of beer in a case of beer?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1625: Physician, mathematician, and physicist Rasmus Bartholin born. He will discover the double refraction of a light ray by Iceland spar, publishing an accurate description of the phenomenon in 1669.

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  1819: Physicist and mathematician Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet born. He will make pioneering contributions to fluid dynamics (including the Navier–Stokes equations) and to physical optics.

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  1863: Artist Eugène Delacroix dies. His use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of color will shape the work of the Impressionists.

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  1942: Major General Eugene Reybold of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the "Development of Substitute Materials" project, better known as the Manhattan Project.

Topic of the Day

Hats

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  The Hunting of the Raspberry Beret is a nonsense poem by English writer [REDACTED] which borrows the setting, some creatures, and eight portmanteau words from his earlier poem "Rubberwookie". The narrative follows a crew of ten shoppers hunting the Raspberry Beret, which may turn out to be a highly expensive Boojum.

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  Lacuna Beret is a 2008 American comedy-thriller film about a serial haberdasher who rigs hats that cause his victims memory loss based on the number of hits received by a website that features a live streaming video of children in sweatshops producing hats. Millions of people log on, hastening the victims' ignorance of child labor conditions around the world.