25 March 2014

Birthdays
Seychelle Gabriel b. 1991 (Falling Skies, The Last Airbender, The Spirit)
Kiowa Gordon b. 1990 (Twilight Saga)
Aly Michalka b. 1989 (Phil of the Future)
Sean Faris b. 1982 (Supernatural, Free Runner, The Vampire Diaries, Ghost Machine, Smallville)
Lee Pace b. 1979 (The Hobbit, Guardians of the Galaxy, Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies)
Lark Voorhies b. 1974 (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Small Wonder)
Laz Alonzo b. 1974 (Avatar)
Kari Matchett b. 1970 (Invasion, Plague City: SARS in Toronto, Wonderfalls, Cube, Cube2, Earth: Final Conflict, Poltergeist: The Legacy, PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, Forever Knight)
Sarah Jessica Parker b. 1965 (Mars Attacks!, Hocus Pocus)
Brenda Strong b. 1960 (Starship Troopers, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Craft, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Spaceballs)
Peter O’Brien b. 1960 (Doctor Who, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, Relic Hunter, The Lost World, Spellbinder: Land of the Dragon Lord, Time Trax)
Bonnie Bedelia b. 1948 (Flowers for Algernon [2000], Needful Things, The Boy Who Could Fly, Salem’s Lot)
Richard O'Brien b. 1942 (Elvira’s Haunted Hills, Dungeons & Dragons, Dark City, Flash Gordon, Shock Treatment, The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
D.C. Fontana b. 1939 (writer, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Logan’s Run [TV], The Six Million Dollar Man)
Sylvia Anderson b. 1937 (writer, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons from Mars, Space:1999, UFO, Joe 90, Stingray, Fireball XL5, Supercar)
James Lovell b. 1928 (astronaut, twice to the moon, never stood on it)
Roberts Blossom b. 1924 died 8 July 2011 (The Twilight Zone[1980s], Tales from the Darkside, Resurrection, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Slaughterhouse-Five)
Patrick Troughton b. 1920 died 28 March 1987 (The Omen, Space: 1999, Doctor Who, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Scars of Dracula, The Gorgon, H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man)

This year, if I get a birthday of an astronaut, the Picture Slot decision is easy. Last year, I had a picture of D.C. Fontana, true to my Star Trek nerd roots. (If you want a quick explanation of the difference in quality between Star Trek and Space:1999, looking at the work of our two birthday girls D.C. Fontana and Sylvia Anderson gives you a good idea of the lay of the land.) If I ignore the Pretty Girl = Picture Slot criterion, my top two choices for next year will be Richard O'Brien as Riff-Raff and Patrick Troughton as the second Doctor.

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

Predictor: Ray Kurzweil in his 1999 book The Age of the Spiritual Machines

Prediction: Computers can recognize their owner's face from a picture or video.

Reality: This prediction takes a little parsing. He writes this in 1999 and facial recognition software had already had some breakthroughs in the late 1990s and improved significantly in the first ten years of this century.

To be precise, the prediction is about computers recognizing their owner's face. This might be a security procedure in some very high tech place where secrecy is at a premium, but it's certainly not an everyday feature of the computers sitting on multiple millions of desks in people's homes and offices. So it is fair to say some computers were able to do this in 2009, but this technology already existing in 1999 when he wrote this. I'm going to say this prediction is about facial recognition becoming an everyday thing a lot of people us, so I call this one a failure.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

T. Baron Russell gets pre-empted by Nate Silver, predicting the outcome of the election in November. People who know me well know how much I love Nate Silver. People who don't know me will find out my true feelings tomorrow.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!