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The Gnomon Chronicles is a work of fiction and nonfiction by Karl Jones (nonfiction). Fresh content daily.
December 12

Better Than News

Moby Dick: Beyond the Sea is a science fiction thriller film based on the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
The Bridges of RoboCop County is an American science fiction romantic crime drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and Paul Verhoeven, starring Meryl Streep and Peter Weller.
One C.H.O.M.P. at a Time is an American television sitcom about a young inventor (Valerie Bertinelli) who creates C.H.O.M.P.S. ("Canine HOMe Protection System"), a robotic dog for use as part of a home protection system.
"Back On the Supply Chain Gang" is a song by Chrissie Hynde and the Department of Corrections.
When You're Smiley is a 2018 spy novel by John le Carré. Plot: spymaster George Smiley is called out of retirement to investigate the death of Louis Armstrong. Smiley learns that Armstrong had discovered information that will lead to a final confrontation with their mutual nemesis, the Soviet intelligence officer Karla.
"You Can Call Me Algorithm" is a song by Paul Simon and HAL 9000.
"Everything is going to be okay." —Messier 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. Source: Gnomon Chronicles Astronomy Society, a non-profit cooperative transdimensional corporation which interviews stars, planets, nebulae, and other cosmological phenomena.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Popeye is a 1989 crime drama film about an English gangster (Popeye the Sailor Man) and his reluctant yet elegant wife (Helen Mirren).

Beyond Plausible

Dune, Where's My Cargo? is a science fiction comedy stoner film about Paul Atreides (Ashton Kutcher), who finds himself unable to remember where he parked his spice crawler after a night of Water of Life recklessness.
"Unobtainum must be obtained, or the Empire is doomed." (From "Avatar, Avatar", one of the "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek.)
Matrix of Theseus is a 1999 dystopian science fiction philosophy lecture narrated by Keanu Reeves.
"A Man With No Phone" is a song by the folk rock band America.

In Other Words

Bigger truths have smaller truths
Within their facts to bind 'em
And those facts have smaller facts
And so on, till you find 'em.
—"Siphonaptera 2"

Are You Sure ...

• ... that astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (4 July 1868 – 12 December 1921) discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars?

• ... that Break In at Tiffany's is a 1961 American romantic heist film about Holly Getlightly (Audrey Hepburn), a naïve, eccentric café society con artist who falls in love with a struggling safecracker?

Selected Anniversaries

1204: Rabbi, philosopher, astronomer, and physician Maimonides dies.
1685: Mathematician John Pell dies. He expanded the scope of algebra in the theory of equations.
1862: USS Cairo sinks on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.
1901: Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal (the letter "S" in Morse Code), at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland.
1921: Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt dies. She discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars.
1966: The Beatles release Dr. Robber.

Topic of the Day

Alien (film)

Tantrum is a 1979 shopping fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott 1.1 and written by [REDACTED] which follows an ensemble case of shoppers aboard the commercial space shopping mall Nostromo who encounter the eponymous Tantrum, an aggressive and deafening child set loose on the ship.
McRib is a 1991 science fiction fast-food film about an alien sandwich which invades the Earth.
Rosemary's Alien is a 2012 American horror science fiction film about a pregnant women (Mia Farrow) must choose between bearing the Devil's child and bearing an alien child.
Sleeping Beauty: Resurrection is a 1997 science fiction horror romance film about a space-traveling princess (Sigourney Weaver) who is awakened from hyber-sleep by a deadly alien prince.