February 17
Better Than News
"All Things Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" is a syndicated radio program produced by Samuel Delaney and National Public Radio.
Curb Your Malthusianism is an American television sitcom created by Thomas Robert Malthus and Larry David.
Inverted Flight 19: Five Navy planes become permanently trapped in the Bermuda Triangle Dead Letter Office after a junior Gnomon algorithm engineer in the United States Navy Advanced Philately Division misplaces a decimal point.
Martian Pixy-Stix is a science fiction novel by American sociologist Philip K. Dick 1.1 about mental illness, the physics of time, and the dangers of sugar addiction.
Ezekiel Rider is a 1969 American independent Old Testament road drama film starring Peter Fonda as the prophet Ezeziel.
Missed Coldplay for You is a 1971 American psychological thriller film about a radio disc jockey (Clint Eastwood) being stalked by an obsessed British rock band (Coldplay).
Are You Sure
• ... Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets; and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism); and that Bruno insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center"?
• ... that mathematician Abraham Fraenkel published two papers in the 1920s which sought to improve Ernst Zermelo's axiomatic system, and that the result is the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms?
• ... that No Escape From Telephones is a 1953 American science fiction thriller film about a police officer (Dick Tracy) who must bring a deranged computer (HAL 9000) to justice?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1600: Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake.
1863: Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley engages and sinks the Union warship USS Housatonic. This is the first known instance of a submarine engaging and sinking a warship.
1891: Mathematician Abraham Fraenkel born. He will contribute to axiomatic set theory, and publish a biography of Georg Cantor.
1953: Premiere of No Escape From Telephones, an American science fiction thriller film about a police officer (Dick Tracy) who must bring a deranged computer (HAL 9000) to justice.
Topic of the Day
American Gangbird is a 2007 American ornithology buddy crime film about a thieving bird (Russell Crowe) who smuggles bright shiny objects, and an Audubon Society detective (Denzel Washington).
NOAA is a 2014 post-Biblical drama-science film starring Russell Crowe and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Guild Navigator is a 2000 epic historical science fiction film about a Spacing Guild pilot (Russell Crowe) who is betrayed when Princess Irulan, the ambitious daughter of the Padishah Emperor, murders her father and seizes the throne.