21 October 2014

Birthdays
Mark Rendall b. 1988 (30 Days of Night, Time Warp Trio, ReGenesis, Tales from the Neverending Story)
Alex Kew b. 1986 (My Parents are Aliens)
Charlotte Sullivan b. 1983 (The Colony, Alice [2009], Smallville)
Matt Dallas b. 1982 (Life Tracker, Eastwick, Kyle XY, Way if the Vampire)
Will Estes b. 1978 (The Dark Knight Rises, Meego, Harry and the Hendersons [TV])
Nakia Burrise b. 1974 (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Power Rangers)
Sasha Roiz b. 1973 (The Day After Tomorrow, Grimm, Warehouse 13, Caprica, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Land of the Dead, Mutant X)
Melora Walters b. 1960 (The Butterfly Effect, Twice Upon a Time)
Ken Watanabe b. 1959 (Godzilla, Inception, Batman Begins, Space Travelers)
Carrie Fisher b. 1956 (Big Bang Theory, Smallville, Hook, Drop Dead Fred, The Time Guardian, Amazing Stories, Frankenstein [1984 TV], Thumbelina, Star Wars)
Catherine Hardwicke b. 1955 (director, Twilight)
Tom Everett b. 1948 (FlashForward, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Journeyman, Space: Above and Beyond, Eerie, Indiana, Quantum Leap, Max Headroom, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Automan)
Everett McGill b. 1945 (Jekyll Island, Werewolf, Silver Bullet, Quest for Fire, Dune)
Paula Kelly b. 1943 (Peter Pan [1976 TV], Soylent Green, The Andromeda Strain)
Julie Parrish b. 1940 died 1 October 2003 (Captain Nice, Star Trek)
Jack Taylor b. 1936 (Conan the Barbarian, The Vampire’s Night Orgy, Horror of the Zombies, Female Vampire, Doctor Jekyll y el Hombre Loco, Count Dracula [1970], Succubus)
Ursula K. LeGuin b. 1929 (won 1970 Nebula and Hugo for The Left Hand of Darkness, won 1975 Nebula and Hugo for The Dispossessed, won 1991 Nebula for Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, won 2009 Nebula for Powers)
Leonard Rossiter b. 1926 died 5 October 1984 (Alice in Wonderland [1985 TV], 2001: A Space Odyssey)

A relatively short list today and for iconic people to put in the Picture Slot, I count three: Last year's winner Carrie Fisher, this year's winner Ursula K. LeGuin and the front runner for next year, Ken Watanabe. (If I was younger, I might include Matt Dallas, star of Kyle XY.) There are three Canadians to spot and Matt Dallas isn't one of them.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

 

Predictor: Harold Camping

Prediction: On 21 October 2011, the world is destroyed five months after the righteous have been taken bodily into heaven.

Reality: This is the last time I will take the corpse of Dr. Harold Camping out of the ground and give it some well-deserved abuse. There have been several people who have predicted the end of the world, missed the date and tried again. Camping is the only one I know of who made a bigger media splash after he struck out a few times.

I am mystified by the folks who swallow this stuff. While it does not rise to the level of a mathematical proof, the inductive evidence is overwhelmingly convincing that we are all going to die. There are some folks who would prefer to believe "OMG! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" for reasons unclear to me.

While the cliche is that "sex sells", we see that in politics, "fear sells". A tweet from Gallup this week stated that 16% of Americans believe that either they or a family member will die of Ebola. To me, that seems every bit as dumb as believing in The Rapture, but I don't live in their world and I'm not constantly flooded with the fearmongering. I have breakfast a few times a month at a diner near my house that has CNN on a big TV. While not as scaremongering as Fox News, CNN still wants to keep its viewers alarmed and worried about the world. 30 minutes of CNN every month is more than enough for me, thanks very much.

 

Splash illustration for the rest of October: This is the date, except no substitutes. One year from today, Doc Brown, accompanied by Marty McFly and his girlfriend, travel from 1985 to Oct. 21, 2015. The idea in the first two films is that we get three snapshots at intervals of 30 years, 1955, 1985 and 2015. For the rest of the week, we will get predictions from Back to the Future Part 2 and one from Back to the Future.

Oops, I spoiled my INTO THE FUTURE and IN THE FUTURE gag. Obviously, I have to plan ahead.

I promise to do so... IN THE FUTURE!

6 September 2013

Birthdays
Idris Elba b. 1972 (Prometheus, Thor)
China Miéville b. 1972 (won 2010 Hugo for The City & the City)
Patti Yasutake b. 1953 (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Max Schreck b. 1879 died 20 February 1936 (Nosferatu)

Elba is likely better known as Stringer Bell on The Wire and Ms. Yasutake was Nurse Ogawa, but I gave the Picture Slot to Max Schreck in his iconic role in the silent vampire movie that pre-dated Dracula.

Many happy returns to the living.

 

Prediction and predictor: In 1992, Harold Camping publishes a book 1994? that predicts a strong likelihood Christ will return in September 1994.

Reality: Camping made a huge spectacle of himself in 2011, but he had already made a smaller similar mistake in the early 1990s. There's even a question mark in the title, but I remember seeing a few bumper stickers on cars in the Bay Area. (Camping's Family Radio network is headquarted in Oakland.) It's easy to mock Camping and he obviously has earned it, but I think it would be wrong to call him a charlatan. He spent almost all his fortune in 2011 getting the word out.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

An exact date for the end of the world, this time with nukes in 1974.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

21 May 2013

Birthdays
Richard Hatch b. 1945

Mr. Hatch is the major link between the original Battlestar Galactica and the re-boot, though he does not play the same role or even an older version. Many happy returns of the day to him.

Movies released
Shrek Forever After released, 2010
Terminator Salvation released, 2009
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back released, 1980

It's nerd blasphemy to say this, but I am not the biggest Star Wars fan ever. Ewoks sucked the fun out of it for me long before anyone heard of Jar Jar Binks.  That said, The Empire Strikes Back is still one of the greatest sequels ever made, right up there with the second Godfather. If it hadn't been as good as it was, the series could easily have faded away.

Prediction: On May 21, 2011, the righteous will ascend bodily into heaven before the five months of tribulation that proceed the destruction of the planet.

Predictor: Dr. Harold Camping

Reality: I first heard of Camping in the early 1990s. In 1992, he published a book entitled 1994? which postulated that Christ would return in a few years. He gave himself some wiggle room with the question mark and when nothing happened in September 1994, he adjusted his date to March 1995. He did the same in May of 2011, adjusting the date of the Rapture forward five months. The big difference between the prediction last century and the one from two years ago was Camping's advertising budget. It is estimated that over $100 million was spent getting the message out, the vast majority of all the assets the company had. There was also a lot more media attention in 2011 than there was in the 1990s, so his failure was even more humiliating.

Blogger's note: I realize Dr. Camping in no way counts as science fiction, but the same could be said for John Elfreth Watkins. I love a good prediction and if it comes with a date attached, it's gold as far as I'm concerned. Of course, the people who predict the biblical apocalypse suck at it, but regular readers of this blog will realize that science fiction doesn't do all that great a job of predicting exact dates either.  There are some brilliant gems, but in general, science fiction predictions adhere to Sturgeon's Law, Ted Sturgeon's famous answer to a critic who claimed that ninety percent of science fiction was crap.

Sturgeon's reply: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!


My man crush John Elfreth Watkins gets a week off because we have yet another exact date that came and went, this one from one of my least favorite films of this century, if not of all time.

 
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!