The Great Geek Manual

Thanksgiving is America’s national chow-down feast,
the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.

- Michael Dresser

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations – in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

- The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, 1995.

1607
William Shakespeare publishes King Lear. Many later historians will believe it to be the first book for which a copyright claim is made in the Entry Book of Copies at the Stationers’ Company in London.

1789
In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is first observed on the recommendation of President George Washington and with the approval of Congress.

1864
Charles Dodgson, who will later publish under the pen name Lewis Carroll, sends the handwritten manuscript of his fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures Underground to ten year-old Alice Liddell as an early Christmas gift. Dodgson had promised the girl that he would record the story after first told her and her two sisters the tale to pass the time while traveling via row boat from Folly Bridge, Oxford to Godstow on The Isis for a picnic outing. One year later, the manuscript would be published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

1865
Macmillan and Co. publishes the juvenile fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll in England. The novel included forty-two illustrations drawn by John Tenniel, who will be long remembered for the contribution. The novel, which tells the story a young girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a magical world populated with bizarre characters. It would become enormously influential in the fantasy genre. Queen Victoria enjoyed the book so much that she would send Dodgson a letter saying that she would be “pleased to accept any other works by the same pen.”

1881
The Western Electric Manufacturing Company abbreviates its name to “Western Electric” and acquires the only existing licenses to make Bell System telephone equipment through purchases and the expirations of existing contracts.
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Comics

• The readers of Comic Book Resources has voted on The Top 25 Comic Book Battles of all time.

Film

• I Was Trapped In A Movie Theater With Teenage Twilight Fans is a great look at Twilight phenomena from the perspective of someone who isn’t a teenage girl.
• The LA Time rattles off the long sad list of remakes of classic sci-fi films Hollywood will be butchering in the near future.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Listen to “Marionettes, Inc.” and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury, read by – wait for it – Burgess Meredith at Zombie Astronaut. Try not picture him a purple top hat.
• Harlan Ellison says “‘Sci-Fi’ is a debasement,” and even though I realize that he means that the abbreviation is derogatory, I still say that Ellison is far and away the whiniest bitch ever to publish.

Television

• io0 counts down the 45 Coolest Moments In Doctor Who’s History. Why not fifty or an even hundred, I don’t know, but they do a fair job picking out the moments.
• Over the weekend, a clue to who the next Dr. Who might be was leaked.

Video Games

• 20 Video Game Commercials That Will Make You Nostalgic.
• Alt Text names the Top 5 Most Guilt-Inducing Videogames, dubbing World of Warcraft the “Guilt Parfait” of video games.
• Cheryl Olson, author of “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do” says that video games are like books, healthy if age appropriate. It’s a refreshing take on game violence.
• GameRadar presents 101 game facts that will rock your world and The Surprising Origins of Your Favorite Games.

So you’re out on your own now, and you’ve decided to throw your very own Thanksgiving party. Before long, your guest list begins to look suspiciously like your Friday night roleplaying roster. Maybe you should reconsider while there’s still time.

Without further adieu, I present a dozen ways you know it’s a traditional D&D Thanksgiving:

1. Before anyone will sit down, you have to remove the napkin rings from the table to assure your guest that you’re not beginning a new Tolkien campaign. The Elf still eyes you warily throughout the meal.

2. Your friend who traditionally plays the GM insists on sitting behind a game screen at the head of the table.

3. Twenty minutes into grace, you make a note to yourself never to give the Lawful Good Paladin a turn again.

4. The Barbarian loudly protests that it isn’t the Mage’s place to carve the Turkey.
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This level design is amazing. It’s nearly identical to the real thing. Someone must have poured weeks into this. I don’t know how the audio was captured but it’s nearly surprisingly stereophonic.

10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2009 – From picotech to compressed air energy storage, Popular Mechanics counts down the big ideas that will make headlines next year.

DIY Thanksgiving – Instructables has a load of somewhat humorous do-it-yourself projects for the Thanksgiving holiday, including a fractal pie and gravy fountain, as well as some really helpful meal planning tips. And don’t miss the interview with Christy Canida from Instructables over at WBUR.

DOOM – The hit video game finally comes to the web in a Flash 10 port built with Alchemy! It’s kind of slow but awesome nonetheless.

Error Level Analyser – Is a tiny app that allows you to quickly check an image to determine if it might was Photoshop’d or altered. Simple and free to download.

Every Video Format You Need to Know – Gizmodo runs down what you need to know about video codecs and formats. Great for anime freaks and hardcore movie downloaders.

How many Movies can you Name in Two Minutes – Sure, you’re a film junkie, but how many film titles can you type out in just two minutes. It’s not just a test of your typing speed, it’s a test of how many one-word film titles you can think up: Rambo, Saw, Taxi…

If You Liked This, Sure to Love That – The New York Times has an interesting article on the case of Napoleon Dynamite, which stumped the programmers who tried to improve Cinematch, Netflix’s “recommendation engine” for a million dollar prize. Great story, but long.

Incredibots – Build your own robots, play with them in an environment with great physics engine, and embed them in a widget on your website.

Permanently Delete Data – ReadWriteWeb discusses methods of permanently deleting data from a hard drive in order to protect your privacy.

There and Back Again – Blogger Aaron Brazell picks 10 blogs he thinks everybody should read, none of which are this one.

Username – A useful online utility that check the availability of a web handle on dozens of leading web services ranging from 12Seconds to Yahoo. It’s a great first stop when you’re ready to establish a new web identity.

1905
The first US advertisement for a radio receiver is published in the journal Scientific American by Hugo Gernsback of The Electro Importing Company. The one-inch advertisement promotes the Telimco as a “Complete Outfit comprising 1-inch Spark Coil, Strap Key, Sender, Sensitive Relay, Coherer, with Automatic Decoherer and Sounder, 4 ex. Strong Dry Cells, all necessary wiring, including send and catch wires, with full instructions and diagrams.” It’s price is US$8.50. This system is capable of transmitting Morris code.

1906
The first triode is ordered by Lee de Forest who instructed New York automobile lamp maker H. W. Candless to make a glass bulb containing a “grid” wire between a filament and an electrode plate. These specifications extended design previously published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The third element, the grid wire, which regulates the flow of electrons between the filament and the anode plate, represents a significant improvement over the Fleming two-element diode valve. This third element amplifies the variations in whatever signal voltage is applied to the grid. De Forest will name the new component the “Audion tube.”

1960
The first atomic reactor for research and development goes into operation in Richland, Washington. The primary purpose of the reactor is to determine the suitability of recycled Plutonium that had resulted from weapons production as a reactor fuel.

1975
The first US patent for a whole-body X-ray scanner is issued to Robert S. Ledley. (US No. 3,922,552) The Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) diagnostic X-ray scanner can take a three-dimensional image of the body in a series of cross-section images using thin X-ray beams analyzed by computers. Read more about Ledley’s invention at the American Physical Society.
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