February 17
Better Than News
"All Things Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" is a syndicated radio program produced by Samuel Delaney and National Public Radio.
Curb Your Malthusianism is an American television sitcom created by Thomas Robert Malthus and Larry David.
Inverted Flight 19: Five Navy planes become permanently trapped in the Bermuda Triangle Dead Letter Office after a junior Gnomon algorithm engineer in the United States Navy Advanced Philately Division misplaces a decimal point.
Ezekiel Rider is a 1969 American independent Old Testament road drama film starring Peter Fonda as the prophet Ezekiel.
Missed Coldplay for You is a 1971 American psychological thriller film about a radio disc jockey (Clint Eastwood) being stalked by an obsessed British rock band (Coldplay).
One Tin Jury is an action-drama neo-noir film starring Tom Laughlin and Jack Palance.
"Frown Without Pity" is a lost song written by composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington. The track, produced by Aaron Schroeder, was originally recorded by Gene Pitney for the lost 1961 film of the same title.
Beyond Plausible
Stars Wars: Splinter of the OSB is a film by George Lucas in the Star Wars universe, now considered lost.
Time-Mime is a reality educational television series in which time-traveling mimes compete to "do the most with the least."
They Live, We Eat is a short documentary film about how restaurants specializing in alien cuisine are coping with business and xenobiological issues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Other Words
Cocaine Dormammu is a 2023 superhero horror film about an interdimensional demon which goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
Are You Sure
• ... Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets; and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism); and that Bruno insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center"?
• ... that mathematician Abraham Fraenkel published two papers in the 1920s which sought to improve Ernst Zermelo's axiomatic system, and that the result is the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms?
• ... that No Escape From Telephones is a 1953 American science fiction thriller film about a police officer (Dick Tracy) who must bring a deranged computer (HAL 9000) to justice?
Selected Anniversaries
1600: Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake.
1863: Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley engages and sinks the Union warship USS Housatonic. This is the first known instance of a submarine engaging and sinking a warship.
1891: Mathematician Abraham Fraenkel born. He will contribute to axiomatic set theory, and publish a biography of Georg Cantor.
1953: Premiere of No Escape From Telephones, an American science fiction thriller film about a police officer (Dick Tracy) who must bring a deranged computer (HAL 9000) to justice.
Topic of the Day
American Gangbird is a 2007 American ornithology buddy crime film about a thieving bird (Russell Crowe) who smuggles bright shiny objects, and an Audubon Society detective (Denzel Washington).
NOAA is a 2014 post-Biblical drama-science film starring Russell Crowe and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Guild Navigator is a 2000 epic historical science fiction film about a Spacing Guild pilot (Russell Crowe) who is betrayed when Princess Irulan, the ambitious daughter of the Padishah Emperor, murders her father and seizes the throne.