3 June 2013

Birthdays
Suzie Plakson b. 1958
Joe Haldeman b. 1943
(won 1976 Hugo and Nebula for The Forever War)
(won 1990 Nebula for the novella The Hemingway Hoax)
(won 1993 Nebula for the short story Graves)
(won 1999 Hugo and Nebula for Forever Peace)
(won 2006 Nebula for Camouflage)

When you list all his awards, you can see Haldeman is a Big Damn Deal in the world of printed sci fi, but does he look this good in a purple print jump suit? Even his mama would have to say no. And Ms. Plakson played a Vulcan and a (half) Klingon and a member of the Q continuum on Star Trek, one of a handful of people to play three roles as three different species.

Many happy returns to both Ms. Plakson and Mr. Haldeman.

Movies released
X-Men: First Class released, 2011  
 

Prediction: There will be great advancements in the field of microwave technique, whereby living rooms and their occupants will be heated by high-frequency waves from walls or ceiling and short waves will be used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously, with far better results than in the past.

Predictor: Dr. Lee de Forest, "the Father of Radio" in 1952 (photo is not Dr. de Forest, but an early microwave cooker from 1937) quoted in Popular Mechanics.

Reality: Dr. de Forest was a self-promoter at the P.T. Barnum/Donald Trump level. He isn't Marconi, of course, the inventor of radio and he was keen of AM. Edwin Howard Armstrong is given credit for the more useful FM radio, though that credit was stolen from him through a long and vicious court battle with RCA.


Back to the prediction, he gets zero points for guessing we would heat rooms with microwaves and half points for saying it would be used in the kitchen and would be almost instantaneous, but gets marked down for saying it has far better results. Microwave cooking is to real cooking was margarine is to butter.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE! 


Our weekly routine is broken by a comet hitting the earth, plunging us into a new Ice Age. Boy, I hate when that happens, don't you?

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!