The Great Geek Manual

1890
The father of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft, is born at 9:00am in his family home at 194 Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Insanity ensued.

1911
A message originating from the offices of the New York Times in New York City becomes the first cable message to complete a circuit of the globe, being passed through sixteen separate relays in the Azores, Gibraltar, India, Phillipines, Midway, Guam, Hawaii, and, finally, San Francisco. Transmitted as seven o’clock in the evening local time, the message, which reads simply, “This message sent around the world,” is returned to its original transmission point just sixteen minutes later, having traveled nearly twenty-nine thousand miles.

1912
Thomas Alva Edison receives a patent for a “Phonographic Apparatus” and another for a “Storage Battery.” (US No. 1,036,470 and 1,036,471)

1920
The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ) in Detroit, Michigan, goes into operation.
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1791
African American astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his first almanac to Thomas Jefferson to disprove Jefferson’s belief that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.

1839
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre freely releases a manual for his daguerreotype photographic process, the first process to allow an image to be chemically fixed into a permanent picture. The publication produces an immediate and widespread demand among the French public for the equipment and chemicals needed for the process.

1887
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev uses a balloon to ascend above the cloud cover to an altitude of 11,500 feet (3.5km) to observe an eclipse in Russia. He makes the solo ascent above Klin without any prior experience. While his family was rather concerned, he paid no attention to controlling the balloon until after he had completed his observations, at which time he worked out how to land it. Mendeleev will be best known for the ordering the periodic table of the elements.
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Turn your back into a colorful video output panel and leave passersby wondering what they’re missing out on in front with this great tee from Threadless. The shirt comes in sizes ranging from X-Small to XXX-Large and costs twenty dollars.

Disappointingly, there isn’t a single port on the t-shirt in either the the navel or nipple vicinity. It’s enough to make you want to Photoshop your own shirt to buy at CafePress.

Get yours now at Threadless!

I personally believe that this is the single most frightening video I have ever seen in my life. There are six billion people on the planet, and we choose these super nerds to prove that extra dimensions of the universe exist?

I have seen the apocalypse, and it come not with a whimper, but with a rap video.

10 Futuristic User Interfaces that make today look like the future of Minority Report..

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels rounds up 10 Bizarre (and disgusting) Things You Can Buy Online.

io9 takes a look at the Greatest Space Builders in Sci-Fi and how we’ll imitate them one day.

Off-color but true Doctor jokes.

Pixlr is a new flash-based online image editor similar to Photoshop Express, but easier to use and free.

Room with a Screw is the story of a 45 day quest of one blogger to convince a Craigslist scammer to write a poem.

This disturbing description of death by Exposure in Outer Space really makes me glad space tourism isn’t a reality yet.

Webmonkey has a great tutorial on How to Set Up a home Server.

Wow! When I saw a link that read “Most addictive game ever” I thought it was just link bait. Two hours later…

Would you really want to live in a Styrofoam house? It would make it easier to keep a ready supply of ice.

This movie is awesome… better than most of the crap the Sci-Fi channel turns out. Just wait for the big end!

Found at the Unibrow

Comics

• Evidently, the new Barbie, which is dressed like the Black Canary, is driving conservative to distraction…
• Ten reasons no one cares about Wonder Woman… despite being the only major DC character with breasts.

Film

• Jeremy Tolbert of Fantasy Magazine shares “Twenty Things I Learned From Bad 80s Genre Films“.
• Maxim counts down the The Unsung Heroes of Star Wars, beginning with the rebel with the sagging pants.

Internet

• A fresh take on teleportation: Teleportation should be a matter of simply proving you’re somewhere else.
• Michael Swaim of Cracked responds to Orson Scott Card’s rallying cry against gays, in Cracked’s typically colorful manner.
• Tor.com gets hacked. Is it poetic justice or a sad take on the tragedy of the commons?
• What is the The Photoshop Effect and how far does it really permeate the media? The answers: the reason little girls hate themselves and all the way through.

Television

• Doc Artz ponders LOST’s top 9 unanswered questions. I expect he will be assassinated by Polar Bears any day now.
• Doll House Preview! Doll House Preview! Doll House Preview!

Writing

• A grotesque comparison of a steamy love affair to a New York City street has won a Washington man this year’s grand prize in an annual bad writing contest.
• Literary agent Colleen Lindsay examine the elements of the perfect query letter.