The Great Geek Manual

Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.

- The Exposition of 1851: Or Views of the Industry, The Science and the Government of England by Charles Babbage, 1851.

Read the text of The Exposition of 1851 at Google Books.

1631
The transit of Venus occurs as predicted by Johannes Kepler. He correctly predicted that an ascending node transit of Venus would occur in December 1631, but it passed unobserved in part because his prediction wasn’t sufficiently accurate to predict the exact time it would occur and in part because it occurred after sunset for most of Europe.

1768
The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which will eventually become the oldest continuously published English-language encyclopedia, is published under the title, “Encyclopedia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan.” The first edition is published in one hundred installments, which were later bound in three volumes. Each installment costs sixpence or eight pence for an edition printed on finer paper and was delivered in weekly installments. It will also be published under the pseudonym “A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland,” a title which refers to the many gentlemen who had purchased subscriptions. The three bound volumes will be sold for twelve pounds sterling apiece. The set runs 2,391 pages and includes 160 copperplate illustrations. However, one set of illustrations, a three page depiction of female pelvises and fetuses in the midwifery article will be torn from every copy by order of King George III.

1877
Thomas Alva Edison records his own recitation of “Mary had a Little Lamb” onto a cylinder wrapped with tin foil using his newly completed prototype hand-cranked phonograph at his Menlo Park Laboratory. For all intents and purposes, it is the first recording of a human voice. The word “Halloo” may have been recorded in July on an earlier, paper model derived from his 1876 telegraph repeater, but if such a recording was made, it was destroyed before this recording was made. John Kruesi built the phonograph December 1 – 6, from a sketch Edison made on November 29 (not on August 12 as Edison mistakenly wrote on another sketch in 1917). When Kruesi heard Edison’s first recording later the same day, he exclaims “Gott in Himmel!” (”God in Heaven”). Edison will be granted a patent for the phonograph on February 19, 1878. (US No. 200,521)
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Douglas “Ask a Ninja” Sarine has declared December 5th Ninja Day! He’s asking people to plan Ninja Day activities with a wiki, and encouraging photo sharing with the unique tag “NinjaDay2007.” So go out and enjoy death-tivities near you!

1776
Phi Beta Kappa, America’s first academic honor society, is founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Organized by a group of enterprising undergraduates, members meet regularly to debate, socialize, and write. They institute an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, and an elaborate initiation ritual. When the Revolutionary War will later forces William and Mary to close in 1780, newly-formed chapters at Harvard and Yale direct Phi Beta Kappa’s growth and development.

1879
The first US patent for an automatic telephone switching system is issued to Daniel Connolly of Philadelphia, Thomas A. Connolly of Washington, D.C., and Thomas J. McTighe of Pittsburgh. (US No. 222,458) The system consists of a single-line wire, a battery of cells located at each telephone, and a dial switching mechanism for each line.
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There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence – or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly’s wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

- The Lost Worlds of 2001 by Arthur Clarke, 1972.

Art

• Check out the Gallery of BattleStar Galactica Artwork drawn by Star Wars Concept Artists.
• RabitTooth has a great line of “Steam Punk” Star Trek Wallpapers.
• WellMedicated has posted a gallery of Vintage “Space Age” Illustrations.

Comics

• Read scans from Adam Link in Business from Weird Science-Fantasy No. 29 over at Grantbridge Street.

Film

• Strange Horizons runs down everything you need to know about The Day the Earth Stood Still.
• Suvudu lists The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2008. The Strangers predictably makes the list, though, despite scaring the living crap out of me, it only ranks the bottom position; however, Let the Right One In and The Ruins rank one and two, leaving me with the feeling that these people know what they’re talking about.
• Watch the 1997 film Gattaca online at Crackle. It’s not exactly action packed, but its a great film nonetheless.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Listen to “Queen of the Black Coast” by Robert E. Howard performed with a full cast over at Broken Sea Audio.
• Free Fiction: Listen to the vintage tale “Santa Clause Conquers the Martians” at Dr. Forrest’s Cheeze Factory.
• Free Fiction: Read “Spring Training: A Lucifer Jones Story” by Mike Resnick at Subterranean online.
• Tor.com’s Jo Walton looks at the issue of swearing in genre fiction in the article Knights Who Say “Fuck”.

Music

• The latest music video from How I Became the Bomb for their song “Salvage Mission” features a pilot in a star fighter. Great graphics, mediocre song.

Writing

• What Never to Say to a Writer?/a>

This is far and away the Trek Slash I’ve ever seen… which is sadly quiet a feat.

Source: Topless Robot

1974
Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments presents the world’s first miniature electronic calculator to the Smithsonian Institution for their collection.

1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) division reports the doubling of the information storage capacity of the IBM 3033 processor to sixteen million characters of storage.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Raymond Mueller, age 21, scores a record-setting 4,722,200 points on Atari’s Gravitar after playing the game for twelve hours and twenty-one minutes at Chuck E. Cheese in Boulder, Colorado. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1984
Tom Jennings, founder of FidoNet, a non-commercial network of Bulletin board Systems using his own Fido BBS software, publishes FidoNews issue number one, an electronic newsletter with information and news about Fido and FidoNet. It will continue to be publish once a week for five and a half years. At its peak, FidoNews has a readship of several thousand. In his first issue, Jennings explains the format of the newsletter, indicates he would like to make some FidoNet bumper stickers and asks that someone else immediately steps into his position as editor.
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Digital information, unconstrained by packaging, is a continuing process more like the metamorphosing tales of prehistory than anything that will fit in shrink-wrap. From the Neolithic to Gutenberg (monks aside), information was passed on, mouth to ear, changing with every retelling (or resinging). The stories which once shaped our sense of the world didn’t have authoritative versions. They adapted to each culture in which they found themselves being told. Because there was never a moment when the story was frozen in print, the so-called “moral” right of storytellers to own the tale was neither protected nor recognized. The story simply passed through each of them on its way to the next, where it would assume a different form. As we return to continuous information, we can expect the importance of authorship to diminish. Creative people may have to renew their acquaintance with humility.

- “Everything You Know About Intellectual Property Is Wrong” by John Perry Barlow
Originally printed in Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas edited by A. Moore, 1997.