April 7
Better Than News
The IPA Sanction is a 1975 American thriller film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as an art history professor, mountain climber, and former brewer once employed by a secret government agency is blackmailed into returning to his yeasty profession for one last fermentation.
The Elements of Sanction is a 1972 thriller novel by Trevanian, the pen name of Rodney William Whitaker, in collaboration with William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White.
Flight of the Aspidistra is a 1986 science fiction social criticism film directed by Randal Kleiser and starring Joey Cramer. It is loosely based on the 1936 novel of the same name by George Orwell.
Astronaut Farm is a 1954 aerospace political animal husbandry film set aboard the Eric Arthur Blair Memorial Space Station.
"The Slurry with the Fringe on Top" is a show tune from the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Pipeline Ho!.
Moby-Cthulhu is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge against Moby-Cthulhu, the supernatural sea monster that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's soul at the knee.
The Italian Job 2 is a 2003 heist film.
Beyond Plausible
The Three Stigmata of Philosophical Zombies is a 1964 philosophy textbook by American sociologist Philip K. Dick.
In Other Words
Buddy Rich Asians is a 2018 documentary film about the Buddy Rich craze which swept Asian nations the previous year.
Are You Sure
• ... that April 7 is National Abuse of Notation Day in the United States; and that while Canada does not have an official Abuse of Notation Day, the phrase "Every Day is Abuse of Notation Day" is often attributed to the mathematician-comedians of New Minneapolis, Canada?
• ... that computer scientist Donald Sarason pioneered the abstract treatment of contractive containment and established a fruitful connection between the spaces Hb and the ranges of certain Toeplitz operators?
• ... that astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher Hasan Tahsini (7 April 1811 – 3 July 1881) was first rector of the newly established Istanbul University, where he gave lectures on physics, astronomy and psychology; that in one experiment, Tahsini placed a pigeon underneath a glass bell and emptied the receptacle, suffocating the pigeon; that conservatives considered Tahsini's experiment as evidence of witchcraft; and that Tahsini was declared a heretic through a fatwa, dismissed from the university, and forbidden to give lectures?
• ... that physicist and academic Petrus Leonardus Rijke (11 July 1812 – 7 April 1899) explored the physics of electricity, and is known for the Rijke tube, which turns heat into sound by creating a self-amplifying standing wave?
Selected Anniversaries
1811: Astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher Hasan Tahsini born. He will become one of the most prominent scholars of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.
1899: Physicist and academic Petrus Leonardus Rijke dies. He explored the physics of electricity, and is known for the Rijke tube (which turns heat into sound, by creating a self-amplifying standing wave).
2014: Mathematician and academic Tim Cochran born. He will contribute to topology, especially low-dimensional topology, the theory of knots and links and associated algebra.
2009: Game designer Dave Arneson dies. He co-created the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax.
Topic of the Day
Dune
The Dune Knight is 2008 action-ecology film starring Christian Bale and Timothée Chalamet.
The Fremen is a 2022 American superhero film about a dispossessed aristocrat (Robert Pattinson) who uncovers corruption in the Gotham Water Department while investigating the Sprinkler, a water thief who is targeting Gotham's elite.
2001: A Spice Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction stoner buddy film about an intelligent computer (Douglas Rain) who befriends a dispossessed aristocrat (Paul Atreides).
Tleilaxu Face Music is a short documentary film about recent advanced in synthesizer technology.
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.
