February 7
Better Than News
Fanfare for the Comic Sans is a musical-typographical work by the American composer-typographer Aaron Copland.
Drift is a 1971 American science fiction crime film about John Drift (Richard Roundtree), a Fremen martial arts master who uses desert lore to drive Harkonnen mobsters from Harlem.
The Blair Witch Labyrinth is a psychological fantasy horror film directed by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Myrick, and Eduardo Sánchez.
Agent Smith, Marriage Counselor is an American science fiction romantic comedy television series about a computer programmer (Keanu Reeves) who helps an artificial intelligence (Hugo Weaving) succeed as a marriage counselor.
Are You Sure
• ... that mathematician G. H. Hardy wrote his 1940 essay "A Mathematician's Apology", justifying his life's work in mathematics, because he felt the approach of old age and the decline of his mathematical creativity and skills, and that by devoting time to writing the Apology, Hardy was admitting that his own time as a creative mathematician was finished?
• ... that the science fiction comedy television series Gilligan's Matrix is loosely based on both Gilligan's Island and The Matrix?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1877: Mathematician and geneticist G. H. Hardy born. He will prefer his work to be considered pure mathematics, perhaps because of his detestation of war and the military uses to which mathematics had been applied.
1889: Engineer and theorist Harry Nyquist born. He will do early theoretical work on determining the bandwidth requirements for transmitting information, laying the foundations for later advances by Claude Shannon, which will lead to the development of information theory.
1897: Physicist and electrical engineer Galileo Ferraris dies. He was a pioneer of AC power systems, and inventor of the induction motor.
1898: Novelist, playwright, and journalist Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'accuse.
1960: Physicist and academic Igor Kurchatov dies. Kurchatov played a leading role in the Soviet Union's clandestine nuclear weapons program, culminating in the First Lightning bomb test.
Premiere of Replicant Vice, an American crime drama television series starring Harrison Ford and Roy Batty.
1999: NASA launches the spacecraft Stardust. On January 2, 2004 it will fly by comet Wild 2, collecting dust samples which will return to earth on 15 January 2006.
Topic of the Day
Dune
Dune Girls is a 1997 British musical drama film about a Bene Gesserit girl group who go on tour across Arrakis.
June is a novel by Frank Herbert 1.1 (as told to OrbGazer).
Wali and Chaumas is an animated action-comedy film starring Wallace and Gromit.
"Mr. Sandworm" is a popular song written by Pat Ballard and Frank Herbert.
Escape From Salusa Secundus is a science fiction dystopian action drama film directed by John Carpenter and Denis Villeneuve.
