22 April 2013

Birthdays
Richard Marquand b. 1938 died 9/4/1987
Jeffrey Dean Morgan b. 1966

Richard Marquand is best known as the director of Return of the Jedi. Let's recall that he is the director and not the writer, so Ewoks are not completely his fault.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is best known to genre fans as The Comedian in Watchmen. Debate rages on as to whether he looks more like Robert Downey Jr. or Javier Bardem. In this picture, I'd go with Downey.

Prediction: By 1964, Television sets will be so thin you can mount one on a wall like a painting.

Predictor: General Electric scientists in 1954, quoted in Popular Mechanics

Reality: Closer than you might think. Although flat screens as actual TVs are first marketed in the late 1990s, engineers at the University of Illinois came up with the first plasma technology screens to be used with computers in... 1964. This is according to Wikipedia and other Internet sources, and of course, when have you ever read anything on the Internet that wasn't true?

(Seriously, this looks accurate.)

The illustration is from The Wonderful Future That Never Was, a collection of predictions from the pages of Popular Mechanics published before 1969 are collected in 2009.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Tuesday is Robert A. Heinlein day, and he predicts the future of food. Will it be Ridiculous Bob or Sensible Bob?  Come back tomorrow to find out.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!