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The Grok, the Glunk and the Golem

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Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. Samuel Butler; Darwin Among the Machines ; 1863 "You can't Un-thunk a Glunk!" Dr. Seuss; The Glunk that got Thunk ; 1969 You may or may not be familiar with the poet Dorothy Frances Gurney, but ...
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Not Your Grandmother's Femme Fatale...

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I Regret to announce that this film presentation has been cancelled for unavoidable personal reasons. Please check back for further updates, and thank you for your understanding. **Original listing follows** Please note that this week's film has been rated  18  in the UK. Remember Too Late for Tears ? Lizabeth Scott's Jane Palmer is often regarded as the femme fatale to end all femmes fatale, in part because she proves herself to be so completely amoral. Outwardly, she is a typical post-war housewife with a devoted (if slightly bland) husband... but then someone drops a bag of blackmail cash into the wrong car, and sweet, demure Mrs. Palmer reveals herself to be capable of extremes that would give Joan Bennett and Barbara Stanwyck pause. Her film ends (a trail of corpses in her wake) with her almost, almost getting away with it. Too Late for Tears was released in 1949, and Scott's character was the perfect expression of the femme fatale for a society in transition. All ...
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