Thursday, October 30, 2008

Spotlight: Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin... several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars... moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Thus began Orson Welles, starring as "famous astronomer" Richard Pierson, to scare many of his fellow Americans silly in a pre-Halloween radio show. War of the Worlds (adapted from H.G. Wells' novel), aired 70 years ago today. The naiveté of those who panicked — or at least wondered — about the supposed alien invasion is perhaps easier to understand given the political climate in 1938, on the eve of WWII.

Quote: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed." — "reporter" Carl Phillips on the Martian landing at Grover's Mill, NJ

Question of the Day: Is there life on Mars?
Advanced life forms as we know them require liquid water. Since the mid 1960's we've known about the presence of frozen water at the Martian poles. The presence of liquid water, however, has never been conclusively proven. Until the existence of liquid water currently on Mars is proven, the odds of life abiding on Mars is low.
   In recent years, however, the two NASA Rover robots on Mars (Spirit and Opportunity) coupled with data from Mars orbiters proved the previous existence of liquid water on Mars, thus raising the possibility that life arose on Mars sometime in the past and perhaps died out.

Word of the day: kritocracy
A Kritocracy is a government ruled by judges.
Perhaps the most famous instance of the use of the word was during a discussion between United States Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed and his law clerk about Brown v. Board of Education. The clerk mentioned that the then still-evolving majority of the Court was reaching the "desirable" result. Reed thought that this observation was irrelevant and dangerous, for if judges voted for results merely because they privately struck the judges as desirable, the Court would overstep its jurisdiction and set the country on the path to Kritocracy.
A kritocracy should be contrasted with a kritarchy....
(© Wikipedia)

Today's History:

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

• Tsar Bomba: the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested was detonated by the Soviet Union over the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya (1961)
• Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in a heavyweight bout in Congo (then called Zaire) (1974)
• Quebec: voters opted to stay part of Canada by a hair's-breadth majority of 50.6% to 49.4% (1995)

Today's Birthdays:

Charles Atlas

• John Adams (1735-1826): the first vice president of the US, and its second president
• Ezra Pound (1885-1972): modern imagist poet who was arrested in the US for treason
• Charles Atlas (1893-1972): Italian-born bodybuilder who ran a mail order course for "97-pound weaklings"
• Henry Winkler (63): The Fonz of Happy Days; other actors born on this date are Ruth Gordon (1896-1985) and Nia Long (38)
• Diego Maradona (48): Argentinian soccer great who led his country to the 1986 World Cup