The Great Geek Manual

1869
Dmitri Mendeleev begins his work on the periodic table of elements.

1879
The National Bell Telephone Company is formed to organize the first New England Telephone Company and the Bell Telephone Company into a nationwide licensing company to accelerate the establishment of telephone service to cities throughout the country. On December 8, 1903, the company will be dissolved by court decree.

1907
Bell & Howell is founded in Chicago, Illinois as a manufacturer of motion picture cameras and projectors by projectionist Daniel H Bell and engineer Albert S Howell. The company’s first product will be the Kinedrome projector. Visit the official Bell & Howell website.

1913
A new version of Thomas Edison’s Kinetophone sound film system is premiered in thirteen cinemas in Chicago, New York City, and St Louis. The system will be used for approximately two years, and two hundred sixty films will be produced for the system.
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I read this morning over at The Register that Amazon.com has pulled a Japanese rape simulator from its shelves.

My guess? About this time next week, rape simulators will be half off at OverStock.com.

Over at PerlMonks, a user going by the handle Falkkin proposed to his girlfriend, Vortacist, who turns out to be a first-year robotics Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon. Yet another example of Geek Love.

Source: Perl Monks via Greg Laden

Scheduled for a 2010 release the documentary The People vs. George Lucas will be a courtroom-style examination of the fanaticism surrounding the Star Wars franchise… and a good old-fashion roasting of its creator.

Film

• According to Ars Technica, science on the silver screen doesn’t have to suck. I whole-heartedly agree. Less alien invasion, more Hadron Collider running amok!
• Comedy Central reviews the The 10 Greatest Presidents of All Time.
• Cracked reviews The 7 Stages of Nerdgasm that fanboys waiting for Watchmen are passing through.
• The Watchmen extra Tales of the Black Freighter gets a trailer.

Internet

• Little Fivers points out the The Top 9 Signs You’re Being Robbed by a Sci-Fi Geek.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Author Jim Butcher is post free preview chapters of Turn Coat, his upcoming novel, on his personal website! As of February 10, he’s posting one each Tuesday for five weeks. Personally, I think that this is the worst sort of tease. I’m dying to read the next book and this is not making the wait any easier.
• Free Fiction: Read “Waiting Room At The Hero League” by Catherine Cheek over at Big Pulp.
• Free Fiction: Trickshot is an intriguing new online science fiction (time travel) story with graphic and wiki components. While I haven’t finished it yet, I like what I’ve read, and it seems as though there’s a lot more to come.
• I was all set to disagree with The List Universe’s list of 10 Great Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Novels, until I saw that they had named my personal favorite, Alas, Babylon, as number one.
• Joseph Alan explains that The Best Sci Fi Can Inspire Us. “..it can even guide our thinking, helping us to new levels of creativity that we might otherwise not have achieved.”

Television

• With Dollhouse not even a week old, SF Universe points out that Forbidden Science is Cinemax’s take on a similar concept, only with an erotic twist.

Video Games

• IGN runs down 10 Smug Hardcore Gamer Quotes.
• Notes on “Fallout 3″ From An Unemployed Video Game Reviewer

“Technology. It is the physical manifestation of the human will. It began with simple tools. Then came the wheel, and on it goes to this very day. Civilizations rise and fall based on technological innovation. Bronze falls to iron. Iron falls to steel. Steel falls to gunpowder. Gunpowder falls to circuitry.” Sobol looked toward the camera again. “For those among you who don’t understand what’s happening, let me explain: the Great Diffusion has begun—an era when the nation state dissolves. Technology will cause this. As countries compete for markets in the global economy, diffusion of high technology will accelerate. It will result in a diffusion of power. And diffusion of power will make countries an ineffective organizing principle. At first, marginal governments will fail. Larger states will not be equipped to intercede effectively. These lawless regions will become breeding grounds for international crime and terrorism. Threats to centralized authority will multiply. Centralized power will be defenseless against these distributed threats. You have already experienced the leading edge of this wave.”

Daemon by Daniel Suarez, 2006.
Chapter 35: Cruel Calculus, Character: Sobol

1880
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is founded when forty engineers from eight states meet in New York City in the offices of American Machinist. Read more about the history of the ASME. Visit the official ASME website.

1923
Archaeologist Howard Carter opens the sealed doorway to the sepulchral chamber of the tomb of King Tutankhamen tomb in Thebes, Egypt. A group of invited visitors and officials is present for the event, including Lord Carnarvon, who had funded the excavation.

1932
The first patent for a fruit tree, only the seventh plant patent in the US, is granted to James E. Markham of Stark Brothers Nurseries and Orchards in Louisiana, Missouri for a peach tree which ripens later than most varieties.
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“But if they’re so successful, why haven’t parasites taken over the world? The answer is simple: they have. We just haven’t noticed. That’s because successful parasites don’t kill us; they become part of us, making us perform all the work to keep them alive and help them reproduce…”

Daemon by Daniel Suarez, 2006.
Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol