February 4

Red Spiral 4.

Better Than News

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  Titanic Cabaret is an epic historical romance and comedy disaster film directed by Bob Fosse and James Cameron, and starring Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Liza Minnelli.

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  Where Eagles Darren is a 1968 British World War II supernatural action film starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Carl Kolchak.

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  The Pope of Dollar General is a 1984 American religious science fiction crime film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and Chris Carter, and starring William Davis, Eric Roberts, Gillian Anderson, Mickey Rourke, David Duchovny, and Darryl Hannah.

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  Metamorphosis is a book by politician Susan Kafka-Collins about how she awoke one morning to find that she is Franz Kafka's wife. Foreword by Al Franken, who awakens to find that he is Franz Kafka.

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  Apes With Car Keys is a short documentary film about human evolution.

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  What Would Emperor Norton Do? is a popular catch-phrase which humorously appeals to Joshua Abraham Norton (February 4, 1818 – January 8, 1880), known as Emperor Norton, a resident of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Norton I., Emperor of the United States".

Beyond Plausible

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  The Stevedore Miller Band is a compilation album by American longshoreman's union and rock band The Stevedore Miller Band.

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  Nostromo Nights: Knives Out in Space is a 2022 science fiction mystery film starring Daniel Craig, Sigourney Weaver, and Tom Skerritt.

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  Mrs. Butterworth's Wild-Caught Sardine Syrup is an unlicensed transdimensional corporation which camouflages itself as a bottle of sardine-flavored syrup.

In Other Words

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  The Bear of Wall Street is a 2013 animal adventure film directed by Martin Scorsese.

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  Canopic Snickers is an unlicensed transdimensional corporation which manifests itself as an ancient Egyptian candy bar with alleged life extension properties.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician Karl Menger discovered the Menger sponge, a three-dimensional version of Sierpinski's carpet, and that both the Menger sponge and Sierpinski's carpet are related to the Cantor set?

• ... that the film Titanic Cabaret is based on actual historical events?

• ... that particle physicists Val Fitch and James Cronin discovered CP violation by demonstrating that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles, thus showing that particles are not indifferent to time?

• ... that theoretical physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, best known for his pioneering work on Bose–Einstein condensates, was a self-taught scholar and polymath whose interests included biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music?

• ... that Nostromo Nights is the first Knives Out film set in outer space?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1615: Polymath Giambattista della Porta dies. Della Porta's most famous work, Magiae Naturalis (1558), covers a variety of the subjects he had investigated, including occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and natural philosophy.

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  1774: Mathematician and geographer Charles Marie de La Condamine dies. He spent ten years in present-day Ecuador measuring the length of a degree latitude at the equator and preparing the first map of the Amazon region based on astronomical observations.

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  1902: Pilot and explorer Charles Lindbergh born. At age 25 in 1927 he will go from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by making his Orteig Prize–winning nonstop flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris.

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  1906: Astronomer and academic Clyde Tombaugh born. He will discover Pluto, along with many asteroids.

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  1928: Physicist and academic Hendrik Lorentz dies. He shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.

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  1974: Physicist, mathematician, and academic Satyendra Nath Bose dies. His work on quantum mechanics provided the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate.

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  1983: Premiere of Two Men Who Fell to Earth, a 1983 British-American film about two men (Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks) who wake up feeling strangely relaxed. Are they living the good life, California style? Or are they puppets of an alien rock star? Directed by David Bowie.

Topic of the Day

Geography

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  Ionic Bondi Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, famed for its chemical bonding, both the bonding of oppositely charged ions, and the bonding of two atoms with sharply different electronegativities.

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  Cape Codd-Neck is a geographic cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. It has unique structure based on a glass marble which is held against a rubber seal, which sits within a recess. This extraordinary feature is thought to prevent gas in submerged geological chambers from escaping into the sea.

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  I Am Curious (Texas) is a 1967 Swedish erotic geography film.