February 15
Better Than News
Flight of the Aspidistra is a 1986 science fiction social criticism film directed by Randal Kleiser and starring Joey Cramer. It is loosely based on the 1936 novel of the same name by George Orwell.
Planet of the Equus is an American psychological drama film about a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who believes that he has been sent to the future to blind the last horse.
Tension at Hanging Picnic is a mystery Western drama film directed by Peter Weir and Charles Marquis Warren.
Those Damned Gideons is a 1996 American religious comedy spy film starring Tom Cruise and Jon Voight.
Donnie Dartho a 2001 American science fiction psychological dance competition film about an emotionally troubled Jedi Knight who inadvertently wins the Sparkle Motion contest by sleepwalking.
The Flanderian Candidate is a 1962 American animated neo-noir psychological political thriller film starring the voices of Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury.
Alka-Seltzer for Venus is a proposal to terraform Venus using enormous Alka-Seltzer tablets.
Beyond Plausible
Edge of Renewal is a 2015 historical war drama film about the Millenia-long conflict between Man and his works.
In Other Words
Cocaine Gimp is a 2021 crime drama film about a masked stranger who goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
Are You Sure
• ... that Stardust was a 300 kilogram robotic space probe, launched by NASA on 7 February 1999, and that Stardust collected dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust, and returned these to Earth for analysis?
• ... that the Forbidden Ratio is a criminal mathematical function exhibiting artificial intelligence and malicious intent?
Selected Anniversaries
1564: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician Galileo Galilei born. He will be called the "father of modern physics."
1589: Astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and crime-fighter Galileo Galilei uses Gnomon algorithm techniques to defeat the Forbidden Ratio in single combat.
1739: Mathematician, astronomer and poet Eustachio Manfredi dies. Manfredi's observations of asteroids provided early evidence, albeit unsought, of the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.
1861: Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead born. He will be a defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy.
1946: ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
1959: Physicist and academic Owen Willans Richardson dies. He won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on thermionic emission, which led to Richardson's law.
1988: Theoretical physicist and academic Richard Feynman dies. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamic he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.
2011: The Stardust spacecraft flies by comet Tempel 1.
Topic of the Day
James Bond
From Rosa with Love is a romantic spy thriller film directed by Terence Young, starring Lotte Lenya and Sean Connery.
Sandfall is a science fiction spy film starring Daniel Craig as a British MI6 agent who must discover the source of Melange, a drug which facilitates interstellar travel.
Blunderball is a 1965 British spy film about a secret marine biologist (Sean Connery) who must find two top-secret NATO atomic dolphins stolen by SPRAT.
Goldschläger is a 1964 spy film about liquor smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger, who plans to make Barry Goldwater President of the United States.
Dial E for Eco is a 2021 ecology disaster film starring Boris Johnson as the fictional Prime Minister of the United Kingdom James Bond.
Dune Another Day: James Bond must locate a mole in Atreides intelligence who betrayed him, and a Harkonnen billionaire who is later revealed to be connected to a Sardauker operative that Bond seemingly killed.