June 13
Better Than News
The Private Afternoons of Pamela Gorn is a 1974 American hardcore science fiction adult film starring Barbara Bourbon, William Shatner, and Bobby Clark.
Talk Club is an American drama thriller film directed by Oliver Stone and David Fincher, starring Eric Bogosian, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton.
It's Monday, Joe is an American sports drama buddy film starring Kevin Costner and Ray Liotta.
"The Poet Hefts the Banana Peel" is an anagram of Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
"A Man With No Phone" is a song by the folk rock band America.
"Take On G" is a song by Kenny G and a-ha.
Beyond Plausible
One does not simply get a good deal on a secondhand tungsten cube. —Boromir, Chief Metallurgist of Gondor
"Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Brew" is a song by Crystal Gayle.
In Other Words
"Be Dutiful, Mania" is an anagram of "A Beautiful Mind".
Are You Sure
• ... that humanist and philosopher Alessandro Piccolomini (13 June 1508 – 12 March 1579) popularized vernacular translations of Latin and Greek scientific and philosophical treatises?
• ... that writer and alleged troll Culvert Origenes translated Alessandro Piccolomini's comedies Amor costante and Alessandro into at least seven other languages, including Esperanto?
• ... that astronomer, astrologer, cartographer, and mathematician Giovanni Antonio Magini devised his own geocentric planetary theory, and that the Maginian System consisted of eleven rotating spheres, which he described in his Novæ cœlestium orbium theoricæ congruentes cum observationibus N. Copernici (Venice, 1589)?
Selected Anniversaries
1508: Humanist and philosopher Alessandro Piccolomini born. Piccolomini will promote vernacular translations of Latin and Greek scientific and philosophical treatises.
1555: Mathematician, cartographer, and astronomer Giovanni Antonio Magini born. He will support a geocentric system of the world, in preference to Copernicus's heliocentric system.
1580: Astronomer and mathematician Willebrord Snellius born. In 1615 he will conduct a large-scale experiment to measure the circumference of the earth using triangulation, underestimating the circumference of the earth by 3.5%.
1773: Polymath and physician Thomas Young born. Young will make notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology.
1831: Physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell born. His discoveries will help usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics.
1854: Engineer and inventor Charles Algernon Parsons born. He will invent the compound steam turbine, and work on dynamo and turbine design, power generation, and optical equipment for searchlights and telescopes.
1931: Mathematician and academic Herbert Saul Wilf born. Wilf specialized in combinatorics and graph theory.
2021: Angus.
Topic of the Day
The Grifters
The NFTers is a 1990 American neo-noir NFT crime thriller film about three grifters desperate to sell their non-fungible tokens at a profit.
A Streetcar Named Annette is a play by Tennessee Williams 1.1. It is loosely based on the novel The Grifters by Jim Thompson.