October 13
Better Than News
They Shoot Zombies, Don't They? is a 1969 American psychological horror film about a group of individuals desperate to escape a Depression-era zombie invasion and an opportunistic emcee who urges them on.
Chanitown is an epic neo-noir science fiction mystery film directed by Roman Polanski and Denis Villeneuve, and starring Jack Nicholson, Zendaya, Faye Dunaway, and Timothée Chalamet.
Bene Gesserit Blues is a science fiction romantic comedy film directed by Alex Garland and Christopher McQuarrie, starring Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac.
Basic Instinct 3: Rise of the Bene Gesserit is a 2006 science fiction erotic thriller film about a novelist and suspected Bene Gesserit witch who manipulates a dedicated Suk physician into betrayal of his Imperial conditioning.
Bene Gesserit in the Dunes is a Japanese New Wave avant-garde science fiction psychological thriller film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and Denis Villeneuve.
Beefswelling of Dune is an erotic science fiction cookbook by Frank Herbert.
The Gogo is an erotic science fiction adventure novel by Jack Vance, the third in the tetralogy Tschew, Planet of Turpitude. It tells the story of Adam Reith, a crashed starship pilot who is seduced by the alien Gogo into abandoning his humanity.
Love in the Age of Zombies is a 1971 American post-apocalyptic horror romance film starring Rosalind Cash and Charlton Heston as survivors of a zombie pandemic.
Beyond Plausible
Assault on Eraserhead 13 is an American surrealist action thriller horror film about a police officer who defends his grossly deformed child against a relentless criminal gang.
In Other Words
Dune: House Ferret is a 2021 science fiction animal adventure film based on the best-selling autobiography of animal trainer Frank Herbert.
Are You Sure
• ... that physicist Walter Houser Brattain (10 February 1902 – 13 October 1987) shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley "for research on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect"; that Brattain later collaborated with P. J. Boddy and P. N. Sawyer on several papers on electrochemical processes in living matter; and that Brattain became interested in blood clotting after his son required heart surgery?
• ... that priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, Oratory of Jesus (6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715) sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God in every aspect of the world; that although Malebranche is better known for his philosophical work, he also made notable contributions to physics, working within a broadly Cartesian framework; and that in 1699 he delivered an address to the Académie Royale des Sciences on the nature of light and color, wherein he argued that different colors resulted out of different frequencies in the pressure vibrations of subtle matter, much as different musical tones derived from different frequencies in the vibrations of air?
• ... that the San Pietro scrying engine is built into the portrait bust of Antonio del Pollaiolo in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli; that the engine was originally designed to simplify the process of creating liturgical calendars; and that, over centuries of use, the San Pietro scrying engine has accumulated the world's largest library of calendrical and theological subroutines?
Selected Anniversaries
1597: Astronomer Johannes Kepler replied to Galileo's letter of 4 August, 1597, urging him to be bold and proceed openly in his advocacy of Copernicanism.
1687: Astronomer, lens-maker, and academic Geminiano Montanari dies. He made the observation that Algol in the constellation of Perseus varies in brightness.
1715: Priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche dies. He was instrumental in introducing and disseminating the work of René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in France.
1729: Leonhard Euler mentions the gamma function in a letter to Christian Goldbach. Adrien-Marie Legendre gave the function its symbol and name in 1826.
1772: Using the San Pietro scrying engine, astronomer Charles Messier previews his discovery of a "galactic whirlpool" with a temporal accuracy of "within a year".
1773: The Whirlpool Galaxy is discovered by Charles Messier.
1890: Mathematician Georg Feigl born. He will work on the foundations of geometry and topology, studying fixed point theorems for n-dimensional manifolds. Feigl will be one of the initial authors of the Mathematisches Wörterbuch.
1976: The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle is obtained by Dr. F. A. Murphy at the C.D.C.
1987: Physicist and academic Walter Houser Brattain dies. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 "for research on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect."
Topic of the Day
Bugs Bunny
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