Life, The Universe, And Everything In Between

May 1 A hover of trout – a collective noun courtesy a Nat Geo mailer 3 Michio Kaku spiraled in and out yesterday and today – first as a co-passenger in Miniverse ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6776808/ ) and now as one of the luminaries who uses Hitchhiker’s Guide terminology in his works. Am I wrong in saying his name sounds female? Perhaps I am getting zapped between him and Ms. Kate Micucci. 15 Hayao Miyazaki has worked with Toei Studios, who created Interstella 5555, Daft Punk’s Discovery album’s animation. Maybe it’s time I got back on the Japanese culture trail, beginning with Haruki Murakami. The factual Harari does not appeal to me – I shall resume Pynchon as well. Joyce’s Ulysses is open in a tab, as almost always. Exegete 16 A spiral for Thursday, courtesy Joyce “Want pure fresh water. Thursday : not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the ke...

April 1 I share Cliff Pickover’s birthday ! Just 28 Years Later… TIL from Stephen Fry in America : ‘ quark ’ is a James Joyce word. Also, I’ve mispronounced archipelago since childhood :D 2 Stephen Fry beat Ricky Gervais ’ When the Whistle Blows in the fictional BAFTAs in Extras. 6 Cannery Row , another ongoing spiral  J 11 I was reminded by a good friend yesterday that I also share an exact birthday with Nipsey Hu$$le … 30 Tolkien later lamented,  "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."

1 Vidocq  inspired Victor Hugo and  Alexandre  Dumas, possibly Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and is mentioned by Herman Melville and Charles Dickens! I would like to follow in the footsteps of such a great list of classical authors. 4  Mahashivratri  and the lead up to 4/20 begins Dame Helen Mirren portrayed the Queen in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. She was also in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and did voice work in  HHGttG  in 2004. 6 Alistair MacLean’s The Last Frontier has already been (loosely) adapted to film as The Secret Ways in 1961. I’d very much like to have  Wellesian  or  Kubrickian  auteur control over a version I make of the intriguing novel, which I read circa 2000. 14 I wonder which edition of The Salmon of Doubt I have. Will check when I remember this while home. 20 The Dam Busters – Pink Floyd The Wall movie – trench run in Star Wars: A New Hope

4 Jon Favreau was in Harold Russell’s last movie. HR got 2 Oscars for the same performance: 1947, The Best Years Of Our Lives. 16 Time passes and 6hourism deepens. Also, I would like to see the YTV version of Watership Down. 20 Readomania added to Blackbird and Penguin Random House

Artificial Intelligence has made the leap from science fiction to real life in a short matter of time. It was initially envisioned as a panacea for the intricate but repetitive processes that aided scientific research and technological advancement – a role it has fulfilled and, in many instances, surpassed. The inclusion of ‘learning abilities’ – mostly thought unique to humans and very few other evolved primates – defines artificial intelligence to a large extent. Faced with unfamiliar situations, how the program deals with the problems and attempts to solve them is key to identifying a stretch of software code as ‘artificially intelligent’. Training a program by making it understand a variety of sensory inputs, whether in the form of digital or analog data, does not mean that program has ‘intelligence’. The result of this factor being used to decide the intelligence of software leads to various technologies that were quite revolutionary at their inception now being classified as ro...

14 Sans doute Parmenides for aletheia > Heidegger 18 Saeed Jaffrey did voicework in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Fit the Twenty-Fourth). Stephen Fry was bound to be involved, appearing in Fit the Twenty-First. 19 Eukukleos (from Parmenides) 21 peripatetic mimetic and diegetic 23 Montaigne and Horace Twitter-boned in Tristram Shandy 30 Stephen Hawking was in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Hexagonal Phase. Stephen Fry re-recorded two Marvin songs (originally Stephen Moore) for the movie, apart from writing the introduction to the UK edition of The Salmon of Doubt. 31 Chapters and synopsis for 32,000 words…a good feeling with which to forge ahead.

1 Wait what: a fleeting clip of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Sealab 2021! Delving deeper into the crisscrossed animation zeitgeist, Captain Murphy (the 2021 version) was voiced by Jon Hamm in Archer. 3 Mo-Larr :D (San Diego Comic Con 2010 exclusive) Trompe-l’oeil (forced perspective) 4 Robin Williams , Conan O’Brien , Robot Chicken – mocking improv overload 5 I’d earlier thought, mistakenly, that Rudyard Kipling was one of the first to use ‘methinks’. It’s the Bard of Avon, himself! (Hamlet is where I’ve currently run across the word.) 6 Sanskrit is a small part of La Dolce Vita. Intriguing. Also, Roger Ebert wrote his first film review for this one. 10 Libethrides = the Muses of Greek antiquacy 11 Paraprosdokian The Exorcist has a movie-within-a-movie: Crash Course 12 Appulse and syzygy Peter Dinklage’s film debut: Living in Oblivion, influenced by Fellini’s 8 ½. 19 Jane Leeves, Daphne of Frasier, was in the Seinfel...