21 January 2014

Birthdays
Booboo Stewart b. 1994 (Twilight Saga, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft)
Izabella Miko b. 1981 (Clash of the Titans)
Svetlana Khodchenkova b. 1983 (The Wolverine)
Ken Leung b. 1970 (Lost, X_Men: The Last Stand, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence)
Michael Wincott b. 1958 (Alien: Resurrection, The Crow)
Geena Davis b. 1956 (Transylvania 6-5000, The Fly, Beetlejuice, Earth Girls Are Easy, Stuart Little)
Steve Reeves b. 1926 died 1 May 2000 (Hercules, Hercules Unchained, The Thief of Baghdad, Goliath and the Barbarians)
Telly Savalas b. 1922 died 22 January 1994 (The Twilight Zone, Capricorn One)

A short list today and the older actors on the list have more star power than the younger names. Geena Davis gets the Picture Slot this year, though next year it might be Steve Reeves. Telly Savalas did almost no work in genre films or TV, but because of my age and tastes, anyone who showed up even once starring on an original Twilight Zone episode with get their birthday noted here.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list, and to Steve Reeves and Telly Savalas, thanks for all the memories.

Predictor: Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines, published in 1999

Prediction: By 2009, intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use, mostly on highways.

Reality: Kurzweil is tech-savvy, so his predictions are not impossible but usually premature. According to Wikipedia, driverless trucks were being used in mining operations last decade, but even now fifteen years out from his prediction, we are still a long way away from driverless cars on the freeways. I can understand how young people in technology today can have a libertarian streak in them, looking upon government as an unnecessary intrusion on innovation. In this case, even if driverless cars are ten times or one hundred times safer than humans, that would mean the number of accidents might be reduced from ten million a year to a million or one hundred thousand a year. That is still a heck of a lot of lawsuits.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Wednesdays mean a visit from our man on the spot in 1905, T. Baron Russell, boldly looking one hundred years ahead.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!