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The Gnomon Chronicles is a work of fiction and nonfiction by Karl Jones (nonfiction). Fresh content daily.
April 16

Better Than News

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  Conan Recall is an epic science fiction sword and sorcery film directed by John Milius and Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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  Charlie's E.T.s is an American science fiction action comedy television series directed by McG and Steven Spielberg, starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu.

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  The Ninth Configuration of Judge Roy Bean is an American psychological Western horror film directed by William Peter Blatty and John Huston, and starring Paul Newman and Stacy Keach.

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  Pulp Timecop is a 1994 American science fiction action crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino and Peter Hyams, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, and Uma Thurman.

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  RoboMountie is a science fiction slapstick comedy action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and Hugh Wilson, starring Peter Weller and Brendan Fraser.

Beyond Plausible

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  Ascension Island is a jazz album by John Coltrane recorded in June 1965 and released in 1966. It is considered a watershed in Coltrane's work, with the albums recorded before it being more conventional in structure and the albums recorded after it being concerned with geography and navigation.

In Other Words

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  RobinsonAde is a lemonade stand franchise inspired by the literary genre that takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned so many imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "lemonade on a desert island story" or a "castaway citrus narrative".

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  Horseradish is an onomatopoeia.

Are You Sure ...

• ... that a United States Air Force Mark 15 nuclear bomb remains lost somewhere in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, following a mid-air collision on February 5, 1958?

• ... that mathematician and inventor John Hadley developed ways to make precision aspheric and parabolic objective mirrors for reflecting telescopes, and that in 1721 Hadley showed the first parabolic Newtonian telescope to the Royal Society, the telescope having a 6-inch-diameter (150 mm) primary mirror, comparing favorably with the large aerial refracting telescopes of the day?

• ... that meteorologist Edward Lorenz's discovery of deterministic chaos "profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton," according to the committee that awarded Lorenz the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences in the field of earth and planetary sciences?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1178 BC: A solar eclipse occurs. Homer's Odyssey contains a passage which may reference the eclipse: "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world."

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  1495: Mathematician and astronomer Petrus Apianus born. Apianus' works on cosmography, Astronomicum Caesareum (1540) and Cosmographicus liber (1524), will be extremely influential in his time.

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  1682: Mathematician John Hadley born. Hadley will lay claim to the invention of the octant, two years after Thomas Godfrey claims the same. Hadley will also develope ways to make precision aspheric and parabolic objective mirrors for reflecting telescopes.

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  1958: The United States military announces that the search for hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb was unsuccessful.

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  2008: Mathematician Edward Lorenz dies. Lorenz introduced the strange attractor notion, and coined the term butterfly effect.

Topic of the Day

Sex

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  Blue Lace Hooks is a 1958 erotic thriller film starring Lana Turner and Red Buttons.

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  Blade Rubber is a 1982 coming-of-age film about a developmentally delayed police officer (Harrison Ford) who tracks down a woman (Miss November) he only knows from a pre-war magazine.

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  Denies Urge is a 2021 action-sexual abstinence education film written, directed by, and starring and Steven Seagal as an ex-Navy SEAL who must deny his sexual urges aboard the U.S. Navy battleship Missouri, which has been seized by mercenary bad boy Tommy Lee Jones and his gang of leather-wearing toughs.

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  The Peano curve is an alleged transdimensional sexual topology which exerts pleasures normally unavailable to Euclidean organisms.

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  Parthenogenesis is to Lysistrata as x is to sociobiology. Solve for x.

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  Pooh vs. Alien is a 2021 children's action-education film. Plot: Piglet and Eeyore are caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle between Winnie-the-Pooh and aliens as they attempt to entertain children long enough for their parents to have some overdue sex.

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  The Dark Penis Envy Rises is a 2021 superhero self-help film directed by [REDACTED]. Plot: Eight years after the events of The Dark Penis Envy, the revolutionary Bone forces Bruce Wayne to resume his role as Batman and save Gotham City from neurotic breakdown.

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  Jacket Potatoes is an unlicensed transdimensional corporation which functions as an erotic snack food.

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  Pink Trombone and Taffy Bomb.

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  How Unimaginable is Unimaginable? is a short documentary film about an unholy threesome between Eros, Thanatos, and various Elder Gods.

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  Under the Skin is a 2013 science fiction film about an otherworldly woman (Scarlett Johansson) who preys on orchard workers in Scotland.

Interview

INTERVIEW: "Gnomon Chronicles: An Interview With The Man Who Makes Up Movies - Meet the satirist blurring the line between entertainment and reality…" by Aaron Cowell for Tr!ll online magazine.

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