December 5

Better Than News

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  Pac-Man in the Garden of Eden is a 1531 painting by Cranach the Elder.

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  Baby changeling station is a table or similar piece of furniture used for exchanging human babies with any of various supernatural entities, including fairies, demons, and trolls.

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  "Midnight Cowboy" is a traditional folk song.

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  Elephant is a 1956 American epic Western drama film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and John Hurt.

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  Camille & Seymour is a comedy detective television series starring academic Camille Paglia and elementary school principal Seymour Skinner.

Beyond Plausible

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  Boxcar Confidential is a romantic crime travel film starring Kim Basinger and Russell Crowe.

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  The Scarlet Learner is a 1995 American romantic literacy awareness drama film loosely based on the life of pioneering lexicographer Noah Webster.

In Other Words

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  No Country for Old Men at Work is an Australian-American crime drama musical film directed by the Coen Brothers.

Are You Sure

• ... that physicist and academic Werner Heisenberg (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) introduced the uncertainty principle, a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics which asserts a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle can be known, given any of a variety of mathematical inequalities?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1708: Mathematician Seki Takakazu dies. He created a new algebraic notation system and, motivated by astronomical computations, did work on infinitesimal calculus and Diophantine equations. Seki laid foundations for the subsequent development of Japanese mathematics known as wasan; he has been described as "Japan's Newton".

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  1859: Mathematician and physicist Louis Poinsot dies. Poinsot invented geometrical mechanics, showing how a system of forces acting on a rigid body can be resolved into a single force and a couple.

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  1872: The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged.

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  1901: Physicist and academic Werner Heisenberg born. He will introduce the uncertainty principle -- in quantum mechanics, any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle can be known.

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  1932: German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.

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  1953: American naval officer William Sterling "Deak" Parsons dues. Parsons served as an ordnance expert on the Manhattan Project during World War II.

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  1999: Mathematician Nathan Jacobson dies. He conducted research on the structure theory of rings without finiteness conditions--a subject closely related to the theory of algebras--which transformed the approach to classical results and broke ground for solutions to problems inaccessible by previous methods.

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  2008: Chemist and composer George Brecht dies. He was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil.

Topic of the Day

Twitter

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  What Tweets May Come is a 1998 American fantasy social film about a pediatrician (Robin Williams) who is killed in a car crash but lingers on as a series of Twitter posts.