February 20

Violet Spiral.

Better Than News

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  Days of Wine and Meltdowns is an American romantic disaster thriller film directed by James Bridges and Blake Edwards, and starring Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jane Fonda, and Wilford Brimley.

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  Wolfgang Mozart's Day Off is an American teen period biographical comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman and John Hughes, starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Matthew Broderick, and Jeffrey Jones.

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  Fitzcarraldo Now is an epic war adventure film directed by Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Klaus Kinski, Martin Sheen, and Marlon Brando.

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  My Three Sons: The Next Generation is a television series about three crime-fighting brothers from the future (ZZ Top) who must go back to the past to prevent their father (Fred MacMurray) from inventing the time machine.

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  The Red Skullton Show is an American television comedy/variety show hosted by entertainer and alleged supervillian Richard "Red Skull" Skelton.

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  Bourne Kong is a 2021 action-zoology film starring Matt Damon.

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  Bee Squad is a television show about an optimistic young beekeeper (Jason Statham) on a mission to save the Earth.

Beyond Plausible

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  Dune Girls is a 1997 British musical drama film about a Bene Gesserit girl group who go on tour across Arrakis.

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  Live and Let a Clockwork Orange Die is a dystopian spy thriller film based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess and Ian Fleming.

In Other Words

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  "Neutrino Ghost Howled" is an anagram of "The World is Not Enough".

Are You Sure

• ... that the Soviet Union's Mir spacecraft orbited the Earth for 15 years, and was occupied for ten of those years?

• ... that physicist and academic Laura Bassi championed Newton's ideas of physics and natural philosophy in Italy?

• ... that the documentary film Tubular Elves is loosely based on the non-fictional album Tubular Bells; and that the non-fictional album Tubular Bells accidentally contains Morse code sent to UK military submarines?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1771: Geophysicist, astronomer, and biologist Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan dies. His observations and experiments inspired the beginning of what is now known as the study of biological circadian rhythms.

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  1788: Physicist and academic Laura Bassi dies. She was one of the key figures in introducing Newton's ideas of physics and natural philosophy to Italy.

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  1972: Physicist and academic Maria Goeppert-Mayer dies. She developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, which she shared with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner.

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  1974: Premiere of Tubular Elves, a short documentary film about how the album Tubular Bells accidentally recorded machine elves during UK military submarine communication tests.

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  1986: The Soviet Union launches its Mir spacecraft. Remaining in orbit for 15 years, it is occupied for ten of those years.

Topic of the Day

Whales

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  "Experimental Methods in Morphogenesis Research" is a monograph by ichthyologist and alleged time-traveler H.G. Whales.

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  Call me HTML is the iconic opening sentence of the novel Moby-Web.

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  "Spock is not coming back" is a short tragic poem by Karl Jones.

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  Moby-Pink; or, The Girl is an 1851 novel featuring the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Orchid, for revenge on Moby Pink, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's penis at the [REDACTED].

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  Scrimshaw abuse, sometimes known as ivory towering, is a patterned use of scrimshaw in which the scrimshander produces scrimshaw with images or side-effects which are harmful to themselves or others.