October 11
Better Than News
Wheel of Candy is a 1992 American gothic supernatural horror film about a graduate student completing a thesis on the legend of the "Candyman", the ghost of a game show host who was murdered for rigging the game.
Jurassic Snack is an American science fiction foodie film directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Gordon Ramsay, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough.
CSI: Coruscant is a science fiction procedural forensics crime drama television series about a team of detectives who investigate the destruction of the Death Star.
The Many Vocal Instructors of Darth Vader is a short instructional filmstrip about the thousands of vocal instructors who have lost their lives to Darth Vader over contract violations.
Metamorphosis is a book by politician Susan Kafka-Collins about how she awoke one morning to find that she is Franz Kafka's wife. In a surprise twist ending, Franz Kafka is revealed to be Joe Manchin.
Indiana Jones and the Heat Death of the Universe is a theoretical physics film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Physicist and renowned film critic Lord Kelvin called it "the least watchable of all of the approximately 10.3 billion Indiana Jones films."
Jules Vernacular: His Life and Grammar is a 2022 revisionist biography of famed attorney Jules Vernacular.
"Mr. Sandworm" is a popular song written by Pat Ballard and Frank Herbert.
Are You Sure
• ... that mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (10 April 1651 – 11 October 1708) invented the Tschirnhaus transformation, by which certain intermediate terms are removed from a given algebraic equation?
• ... that mathematician Anne Penfold Street (11 October 1932 – 28 December 2016) was one of Australia's leading mathematicians; that her work on sum-free sets became a standard reference for its subject matter; that she helped found several important organizations in combinatorics, and supported young students with interest in mathematics?
• ... that Dial U for Unspoofable is a film noir encryption mystery starring Niles Cartouchian as mathematician Kurt Gödel?
• ... that mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra (3 May 1860 – 11 October 1940) joined the opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in 1922; that in 1931 Volterra was one of only 12 out of 1,250 professors who refused to take a mandatory oath of loyalty; and that Volterra wrote: "Empires die, but Euclid’s theorems keep their youth forever."?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1708: Mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus dies. He invented the Tschirnhaus transformation, by which certain intermediate terms are removed from a given algebraic equation.
1889: Physicist and brewer James Prescott Joule dies. He studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work.
1932: Mathematician Anne Penfold Street born. She will specialize in combinatorics, authoring several textbooks; her work on sum-free sets will become a standard reference for its subject matter.
1940: Mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra dies. He was one of the founders of functional analysis, making contributions to mathematical biology and integral equations.
1965: Documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange dies. Lange is remembered for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.
1996: Mathematician and acadaemic Edwin Spanier dies. Spanier contributed to algebraic topology, co-inventing Spanier–Whitehead duality and Alexander–Spanier cohomology; he also wrote what was for a long time the standard textbook on algebraic topology.
Topic of the Day
Tintin
Tintinitus is the perception of Tintin when no actual external Tintin is present.