November 18
Better Than News
Restricted Airspace is an American musical fantasy thriller film starring Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins, an arms dealer with supernatural powers who visits a dysfunctional military contractor in London and employs her unique brand of leverage to improve the corporation's income.
The In Your Dreams Tour was a world concert tour by author Alan Moore and musician Robert Plant.
Ghost Harley and the Way of the Marlboro Man is a 1999 crime film about "Ghost Harley" (Forest Whitaker), a hitman whose faith is shaken by visions of a smoking dog after accepting a contract on Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson).
The Bourne Late Fee is an action film about a CIA librarian who suffers from amnesia.
One Flew Over the Matrix Nest is a 1975 American psychological comedy science fiction film about Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a new patient at a virtual mental institution.
Pulp Fremen is a 1994 crime drama film about Spacer Guild navigator (Ving Rhames) who is kidnapped by Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and held for ransom.
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.
Beyond Plausible
Caramel Knowledge is a 1971 American comedy-drama film which follows the candy-eating exploits of two Amherst College roommates (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) over a 25-year period.
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].
In Other Words
1659: In a letter to Pope Alexander VII, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens declares that proposals to flood the Sistine Chapel "are equally useless to Science and Art alike."
The Gift of the Bene Gesserit is a 2021 short science fiction film by Denis Villeneuve based on the short story of the same name by Frank Herbert and O. Henry.
Are You Sure
- ... that physicist Johannes Bosscha Jr. (18 November 1831 – 15 April 1911) conducted pioneering research on galvanic polarization and the rapidity of sound waves; and that Bosscha was one of the first (1855) to suggest the possibility of sending two messages simultaneously over the same wire?
Selected Anniversaries
1724: Inventor and priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão dies.
1831: Physicist Johannes Bosscha Jr. born. He will make important investigations on galvanic polarization and the rapidity of sound waves; he will be one of the first (1855) to suggest the possibility of sending two messages simultaneously over the same wire.
1865: Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in The Saturday Press.
1959: Mathematician and academic Aleksandr Khinchin dies. He was one of the founders of modern probability theory.
1962: Physicist and philosopher Niels Bohr born. He will make foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
2013: NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars.
2017: Dennis Paulson celebrates fourth anniversary of NASA launching the MAVEN probe to Mars.
Topic of the Day
Elvis Costello
Truss is a 1981 album by Elvis Costello and the Constructions
Mayan is True is the debut studio album by English singer, songwriter, and Mesoamerican archaeologist Elvis Costello.