May 14
Better Than News
Weaponizing Spirograph is a short documentary film about the conversion of Spirograph from civilian to military use.
"A Scoville in Bohemia" is the first short story, and the third overall work, featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional English chef-detective Sherlock Holmes.
The Bounty Whacker is a 2010 American action comedy film about a landscape architect (Gerard Butler) hired to retrieve his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston), who has skipped bail.
Velvet Days and Mondays (Always Get Me Blue) is a musical noir thriller film directed by David Lynch and starring Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, David Lynch, and the Carpenters.
Blade Wobegon is a 1982 American science fiction musical film about a police officer (Harrison Ford) who must find and kill a rogue android (Garrison Keillor).
Saw of the South is a American live-action/animated musical horror film in the Saw franchise.
We Need to Talk About Texas is a 2011 American documentary film narrated by Tilda Swinton and Governor Greg Abbott.
Are You Sure
• ... that mathematician John Charles Fields (1863–1932) worked tirelessly throughout his career to promote the professional of mathematics, especially in his native Canada; and that in the late 1920's he began planning the now-prestigious Fields Medal, awarded to two to four mathematicians, under the age of 40, who have made important contributions to the field; but that due to deteriorating health, never saw the implementation of the medal in his lifetime, leaving $47,000 in his will to fund the award?
... that Garrison Keillor played a rogue android in the 1982 science fiction musical film Blade Wobegon?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1678: Writer and philosopher Culvert Origenes publishes Historia Culvertica, which will soon be widely plagiarized, influencing a generation of humanists.
1679: Astronomer and mathematician Peder Horrebow born. Horrebow will invent a way to determine a place's latitude from the stars.
1863: Mathematician John Charles Fields born. He will found the Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics.
1893: Mathematician Ernst Kummer dies. Kummer contributed to abstract algebra; in ring theory, he introduced the term ideal.
1916: Physicist and astrophysicist Robert F. Christy born. Christy will be credited with the insight that a solid sub-critical mass of plutonium can be explosively compressed into supercriticality, a great simplification of earlier concepts of implosion requiring hollow shells.
1917: Mathematician, codebreaker, and academic W. T. Tutte born. During the Second World War, he will make a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major Nazi German cipher system.
Topic of the Day
Restaurants
1959: The Ham Omelette breakfast cafe and Shakespearean playhouse opens in New Minneapolis, Canada.
Sushi Cage is an underwater sushi restaurant.
Mesopelagium is a restaurant in New Minneapolis, Canada specializing in seafood from the mesopelagic zone.
Last Action Bistro is a 1993 fantasy restaurant management training film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Thumper King is an international chain of spiced hamburger fast food restaurants.
Nostromo Café is a restaurant located aboard the spaceship Nostromo.
Cronenburger is a Canadian-American extreme body modification restaurant chain inspired by David Cronenberg's 1981 film Scanners.
Olive Matrix is a science-fiction theme restaurant franchise with indentured franchises throughout the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere. Olive Matrix. When you're here, you're virtual.
Taconator 2: Judgement Meal.
