October 16

Better Than News

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  Alien vs. Bugs is a science fiction horror film about an iconic American cartoon figure (Bugs Bunny) who is marked for death by an aggressive alien film franchise.

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  Not of This Earth 2: Venus and Mars is an American science fiction horror comedy film starring Traci Lords, loosely based on A Porn Star of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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  Every Which Way but Lost in Space is a 1978 American action comedy film about an astronaut and bare-knuckle brawler (Clint Eastwood) roaming low Earth orbit in search of a lost robot while accompanied by his pet orangutan, Clyde.

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  Moby-Cthulhu is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge against Moby-Cthulhu, the supernatural sea monster that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's soul at the knee.

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  The Count of Monte Krypton is a 2002 historical crime drama film about Kal-El (Jim Cavaziel), a nineteen-year-old Kryptonian who is falsely accused of blowing up his home planet and imprisoned without trial in the Château de Phantom, a grim extradimensional fortress off Marseille.

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  Picnic of the Damned is a 1995 cooking thriller film starring Christopher Reeve and Oscar Meyer.

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  Crucified Corn Dogs is a Grave-to-Table™ ready-to-heat Christian food product.

Beyond Plausible

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  Escape From Salusa Secundus is a science fiction dystopian action drama film directed by John Carpenter and Denis Villeneuve.

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  Do Elons Dream of Electric Jeep? is a novel by mechanical engineer Chip "Pink Riddle" Kid about a post-petroleum economy where Earth's billionaires have been replaced by androids, leaving most millionaires endangered or extinct. The main plot follows [REDACTED], a Dot-Com Boom millionaire who is tasked with "retiring" (i.e. stealing and reverse-engineering) six escaped Nexus-6 model Jeep Electric Autonomous Vehicles.

In Other Words

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  Cloud City: 1999 is a science fiction adventure television series starring Martin Landau and Billy Dee Williams.

Are You Sure

1609: Physicist, inventor, and crime-fighter Galileo Galilei discovers secret math crime gang in the Vatican, vows to "see them all swing from the ends of ropes, in a mortal demonstration of the immortal Pendulum."

• ... that rabbi, physician, and mathematician Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (16 June 1591 – 16 October 1655) followed lectures by Galileo Galilei during the academic year 1609–1610, and was accorded the rare privilege of using Galileo's own telescope; and that, in the following years, Delmedigo often refers to Galilei as "rabbi Galileo," an ambiguous phrase which may simply mean "my master, Galileo"?

• ... that physicist Gustav Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects; that Kirchhoff coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862; and that two different sets of concepts (one in circuit theory, and one in spectroscopy) are named "Kirchhoff's laws" after him?

• ... that physicist Nicholas Metropolis (11 June 1915 – 17 October 1999) led a group of researchers (including John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam) who developed the Monte Carlo method, a statistical approach to deterministic many-body problems?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1655: Physician, mathematician, and theorist Joseph Solomon Delmedigo dies. His Elim (Palms) deals with astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, metaphysics, and music theory.

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  1797: Carl Friedrich Gauss records in his diary that he has discovered a new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.

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  1843: Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.

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  1970: Physicist Shoichi Sakata dies. Sakata contributed theoretical work on the structure of the atom, proposing the Sakata model, an early precursor to the quark model. After World War II he campaigned for the peaceful uses of nuclear power.

Topic of the Day

Violence

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  The Spy Who Slugged Me is a 1977 spy film about reclusive prize-fighter who plans to destroy the world and create a new civilization inside a boxing ring.

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  The Bourne Depravity is a 2021 American action-horror film about a former CIA assassin (Matt Damon) who is pursued by a relentless supernatural killer (Jason Voorhees).

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  Hot Punch-Outs is an American brand of microwaveable fisticuffs generally containing one or more types of hitting, kicking, or head-butting.

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  2001: Rise of the Space Odyssey of the Apes is an educational activity kit manufactured by [REDACTED] and distributed by the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere.

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  "The Oscars of Triskelion" is one of the "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek. Plot: Will Smith slaps Chris Rock during the Oscars.

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  The difference between a weapon and tool is the man who uses it.

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  "O Vehement Lenity!" is an anagram of "The Violent Enemy".