May 8
Better Than News
Polenta and You (full title: Polenta and You: The Untold Story of the Niger Polenta Forgeries) is a young adult adventure story about the confusion between harmless polenta and radioactive yellowcake.
"The Seventies Within"— A transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into Carly Simon and Farrah Fawcett. (Star Trek: Forbidden Episodes.)
Heresy is a rock musical about the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heretics.
"Tweetache Tonight" is a song recorded by American rock band the Eagles about Twitter.
The Omega Kiss is a 1971 American post-apocalyptic science fiction romantic comedy film starring Nichelle Nichols, William Shatner, and Charlton Heston.
Darth Vader and the Quest for Love is a short autobiographical film by Darth Vader.
Beyond Plausible
Everything is a Remix is a 2021 industry training film sponsored by the Board of Applied Cosmology.
Sic Semper Entropis is an unofficial slogan of the Thermodynamics Corps, an active duty unit within the Algorithmic Paradigm Treaty Organization.
In Other Words
Rx 18 (better known as "Shall I compare thee to a cocaine bear?") is one of the best-known of the 154 prescriptions written by the English poet and pharmacist William Shakespeare.
"O Vehement Lenity!" is an anagram of "The Violent Enemy".
Milah Doctor is a 2003 film about a physician (Danny Nucci) who is forced by a crime lord (Paul Sorvino) to perform criminal circumcisions.
Are You Sure
• ... that Antoine Lavoisier played a key role in changing chemistry from a qualitative science to a quantitative science, discovered the role oxygen plays in combustion, helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and was executed as a traitor during the French Revolution?
• ... that mathematician John Henry Constantine "Henry" Whitehead (1904–1960) was one of the founders of homotopy theory, which originated in algebraic topology as a systematic study of situations in which maps come with homotopies between them; and that J.J. Rotman, in his book on algebraic topology, as a tribute to Whitehead's intellect, stated: "There is a canard that every textbook of algebraic topology either ends with the definition of the Klein bottle or is a personal communication to J. H. C. Whitehead."?
• ... that the book Polenta and You: The Untold Story of the Niger Polenta Forgeries describes the differences between harmless polenta and radioactive yellowcake?
Topic of the Day
Titanic
Titanic Cabaret is an epic historical romance and comedy disaster film directed by Bob Fosse and James Cameron, and starring Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Liza Minnelli.
Titanic 2: Under the Sea is a 2023 comedy action-romance film starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Titanic 2: The Way of Water is a romantic science fiction drama film by James Cameron about a human couple who crash-land on an alien planet (Pandora).
The Titanic Strain (originally A Strain to Remember) is a science fiction historical disaster thriller film about a deadly alien organism aboard the ocean liner Titanic.
A million monkeys. A million deck chairs. Sooner or later the Titanic will arrive in New York City.