Birthdays
Bill Milner b. 1995 (X-Men: First Class)
Margo Harshman b. 1986 (The Big Bang Theory, Journeyman, Rise: Blood Hunter)
Jessica Heap b. 1983 (Battle Los Angeles, Journey to Promethea, Mutants)
Len Wiseman b. 1973 (director, Sleepy Hollow [TV], Underworld, Total Recall [2012])
Paul W. S. Anderson b. 1965 (director, Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier, Resident Evil, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Death Race)
Daniel Roebuck b. 1963 (The Walking Dead, John Dies at the End, Grimm, Jack and the Beanstalk [2010], Lost, Woke Up Dead, Halloween [2007], Bubba Ho-Tep, The Invisible Man [TV], Lois & Clark, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: Next Generation, Project X, Cavegirl)
Steven Weber b. 1961 (Eve of Destruction, Falling Skies, Timecode, The Shining [TV], Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Frank Novak b. 1945 (Watchmen, Charmed, Angel, The X-Files, Independence Day, Watchers III, Carnosaur, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quantum Leap)
Adrian Lyne b. 1941 (director, Jacob’s Ladder)
Paula Prentiss b. 1938 (Saturday the 14th, Mr and Mrs. Dracula [TV], The Stepford Wives)
William Alland b. 1916 died 11 November 1997 (writer/producer, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, The Deadly Mantis)
George Gamow b. 1904 died 20 August 1968 (author, Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, One, Two, Three… Infinity)
Some days are loaded to the top with choices for the Picture Slot and other days... not so much. There are several women who meet the Pretty Girl = Picture Slot criterion, Steven Weber is a legitimate TV star, there are a few Oh That Guy actors, but nobody really jumped out at me. When searching imdb.com, the most iconic person I found was the actor who originally played Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but this is a sci fi and fantasy blog, and not all horror films have fantasy elements. So we get the poster from The Deadly Mantis, one of the many giant bug movies made in the 1950s and aired repeatedly on TV in the 1960s, when I first got hooked on sci-fi.
Many happy returns to the living on the list, and to the dead, thanks for the memories.
Predictor: Ray Kurzweil in the 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines
Prediction: By 2009, autonomous nanoengineered machines have been demonstrated and include their own computational controls.
Reality: Much in the way The OMNI Future Almanac over-stated the usefulness of biotech, Kurzweil is way too much in love with nanotech. Looking online, nanotechnology is to this day long on promise and short on performance. There have been some successes in the nanomaterials field, but nanobots are still sci-fi five years after Kurzweil's predicted date. I give him a big goose egg on this one.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Wednesday belongs to T. Baron Russell, our Edwardian gentleman futurist from London, gazing into the future from 1905.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
I am hopeful the nanorobot research continues and will be successful, especially in cancer fighting research. http://www.nature.com/search/executeSearch?sp-c=25&sp-s=&sp-q-1=SREP&pub-date-mode=range&facets=new&sp-q=nanorobots&subject=%2F631%2F67&sp-date-range=0 and also http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400449,00.asp
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about making your own predictions in this blog so that, in a few years or a few decades, others can review your words? You could make one a day or invite commenters to make them.
ReplyDeleteOne of my other hobbies is poll aggregation, kind of like what Nate Silver does except my record was better in 2008 and 2012. As the midterms get closer, I'll be putting up my Confidence of Victory numbers up on the math blog.
DeleteI don't actually count them as predictions until about a week out from election day.