September 11

Better Than News

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  2001: A Shine Odyssey (1968): In this scene, lead programmer Dick Hallorann attempts to shut down the Overlook Hotel main.

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  "Livin' Tweet" is a song written by Jeff Lynne and performed by the Electric Tweet Orchestra.

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  Charlotte's Animal Farm is an allegorical novel by George Orwell and E.B. White.

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  Flow My Androids, The Shepherd Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by American sociologist Philip K. Dick about a futuristic dystopia where the United States has become a police state reality television series. The story follows genetically enhanced police officer Felix Buckman, who wakes up in a world where he has never existed.

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  "Ecology Turret" is an anagram of "Grocery Outlet".

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  Victory Windows is a docudrama film by the Jolly Green Giant about how sunlight from American "victory windows" helped Americans grow strong and healthy during the Second World War.

Are You Sure

... that athematician and computer scientist Andrzej Trybulec developed the Mizar system, comprising: a formal language for writing mathematical definitions and proofs; a proof assistant which is able to mechanically check proofs written in this language; and a library of formalized mathematics which can be used in the proof of new theorems?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1470: Mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller born. He will produce a globular world map and a large 12-panel world wall map using the information from Columbus and Vespucci's travels (Universalis Cosmographia), both bearing the first use of the name "America".

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  1798: Mineralogist, physicist, and mathematician Franz Ernst Neumann born. His 1831 study on the specific heats of compounds will include what is now known as Neumann's Law: the molecular heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic heats of its constituents.

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  1831: Mathematician Carl Jacobi appointed professor. After a four hour disputation in Latin, Jacobi was appointed professor at the University of Konigsberg. While there he inaugurated what was then a complete novelty in mathematics: research seminars for the more advanced students and interested colleagues.

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  1843: Mathematician and explorer Joseph Nicollet dies. He mapped the Upper Mississippi River basin during the 1830s.

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  1862: Short story writer O. Henry, known for his surprise endings, born.

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  1890: Felice Casorati dies. Casorati is best known for the Casorati–Weierstrass theorem in complex analysis.

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  1997: NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.

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  2013: Mathematician and computer scientist Andrzej Trybulec dies. He developed the Mizar system: a formal language for writing mathematical definitions and proofs, a proof assistant which is able to mechanically check proofs written in this language, and a library of formalized mathematics which can be used in the proof of new theorems.

Topic of the Day

9/11

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  9'11" (pronounced "nine months, eleven days", or sometimes "mine hours, eleven minutes", or simply "nine-eleven") is a three-tower composition by the autonomous artificial intelligence John Cage 1.1, based on American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992).