May 22

Better Than News

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  Dude, Where's Mega-City One? is a 2000 American stoner comedy film about two best friends (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott) who find themselves hunting Nexus-6 replicants after a night of recklessness.

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  High-Rise: Mega City One is a dystopian graphic novel by J.G. Ballard, John Wagner, and Carlos Ezquerra.

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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.

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  Ezekiel Rider is a 1969 American independent Old Testament road drama film loosely based on the life of the prophet Ezeziel. Shown here: adaptation in Adventure magazine.

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  When Harry Met Misery... is a romantic comedy-drama horror film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Billy Crystal and Sally Bates.

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  As Lolita Lay Dying is a psychological drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and James Franco based on the novel of the same name by William Faulkner and Vladimir Nabokov, starring James Mason, Sue Lyon, and James Franco.

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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].

Are You Sure

• ... that mineralogist, physicist, and mathematician Franz Ernst Neumann (1798–1895) deduced laws of double refraction closely resembling those of Augustin-Jean Fresnel, and that Neumann subsequently contributed to the mathematical expression of the conditions holding for a surface separating two crystalline media, working out from theory the laws of double refraction in strained crystalline bodies?

• ... that crimes against chemical constants (or simply crimes against chemistry) are crimes committed against the physical properties of matter; and that crimes against chemistry are often committed in association with crimes against physical constants, and that both chemical and physical crimes reduce to crimes against mathematical constants; and that Extract of Radium is widely believed to launder computational power generated by crimes against chemical constants?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1592: Giordano Bruno arrested. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him is his belief in the plurality of worlds.

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  1873: Lawyer, translator, and inventor Per Georg Scheutz born. He will invent the Scheutzian calculation engine, based on Charles Babbage's difference engine.

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  1930: Mathematician, academic, and rabbi Eliezer 'Leon' Ehrenpreis born. He will prove the Malgrange–Ehrenpreis theorem, the fundamental theorem about differential operators with constant coefficients.

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  1946: The WAC Corporal becomes the first US rocket to reach edge of space.

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  1997: Chemist and US military officer Myrtle Bachelder dies. Bachelder was responsible for the analysis of the spectroscopy of uranium for the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. After the war, Bachelder made pioneering contributions to metallochemistry.

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  2010: Mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner dies. His interests included stage magic, scientific skepticism, philosophy, religion, and literature.

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  2024: Self portrait.

Topic of the Day

Food and Beverages

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  Freedom Onion Soup is a brand of French onion soup based on a recipe from the French Revolution.

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  The Good, the Bad, and the Hungry is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Blondie and Dagwood film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood and Julia Child.

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  Cheese Hunter is an American television series about the world's rarest and most dangerous cheese.

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  SkyNet Xenobot Snacks is a brand of self-replicating snack food manufactured and distributed by the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere.