Birthdays
Jack Gleeson b. 1992
Tahmoh Penikett b. 1975
Timothy Olyphant b. 1968
John Billingsley b. 1960
Anthony Zerbe b. 1936
From oldest to youngest, Zerbe was in The Omega Man, two of the Matrix films and one Star Trek movie. Billingsley was Dr. Phlox on Enterprise. Olyphant is best known for Deadwood and Justified, but he was also in I Am Number Four. Penikett was on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse.
I chose Jack Gleeson for the Picture Slot because I feel sorry for the lad. Now 21, his role as Joffrey on Game of Thrones is the biggest role of his short career so far by a country mile, and people hate the character with a white hot hate, as all right thinking human beings should. I worry that he might get typecast, but his current plans are to go back to school and study with hopes of entering academia. I hope this works for him.
And as always, I wish all our birthday boys many more happy returns of the day.
Movies released
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides released, 2011
Prediction: "This simple, practical, foolproof personal helicopter coupe is big enough to carry two people and small enough to land on your lawn. It has no carburetor to ice up, no ignition system to fall apart or misfire: instead, quiet, efficient ramjets keep the rotors moving, burning any kind of fuel from dime-a-gallon stove oil or kerosene to aviation gasoline."
Predictor: Popular Mechanics magazine, 1951
Reality: Usually I ask for an exact date on a prediction, but I liked the history provided by Gregory Benford in the book that collected these pictures and texts The Wonderful Future That Never Was. Benford relates that helicopter commuting was relatively popular for a few decades, though not in personal copters, instead in short hop heli-buses. There were several crashes, many in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the most spectacular was in New York City on May 16, 1977, when a helicopter tipped over while landing on the Pan Am building, the rotors chopping people lined up to board, and then the helicopter hung from the side of the building and one of the rotors fell to the street below.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Tomorrow's prediction is not from science or science fiction, but it is an exact date for the end of the world, so it gets a place on the blog.
(Spoiler alert: The date has already passed and we are still here.)
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
... we are still here.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid I may need better proof than that.