The Great Geek Manual

1638
A lunar eclipse becomes the first astronomical event recorded in the United States.

1783
Antonie Lavoisier announces to the French Academy of Sciences that water is the product of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen. However, this discovery was made earlier by the English chemist Henry Cavendish.

1876
The first public demonstration of Bell’s speaking telephone is given at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1925
Warner Bros. forms the Vitaphone Company in partnership with Western Electric to develop and exploit sound-on-disc technology for cinemas. Development work takes place at the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn, New York, under an eleven person team from Bell Telephone Labs under British-born Stanley S A Watkins.
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An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

- Niels Bohr

Film

• AMC’s Horror Hacker lists Ten Dream Double Features Worthy of the Drive In, beginning with Night of the Creeps and Slither.
• Ebert has given Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen one star… dundundun.
• The final trailer for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is out… and it features Marlon Wayans doing slapstick. It bodes ill.
• Movie|Line rounds up The 9 Most Scathing Critical Responses to Transformers 2.
• Rotten Tomatoes the 50 Best Movie Robots, beginning with Box from Logan’s Run.
• SciFi Wire explains How the giant-robot F/X in Transformers 2 nearly broke ILM.
• Transformers 2 is so bad, some people are actually asking if Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie. (Not in a good way.)

Internet

• British Libraries have begun to tap into Twitter to network and spread information among themselves.

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I found this on Flickr. The caption read, “Our intern starts today. We figured we’d start her off with a little prank.” Readers’ reaction? “Wow – your interns get SEVEN reams of paper to sit on?”

Source: Flickr

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.

- Albert Einstein

New Releases

After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove
Night Shade Books. (ISBN-13: 978-1597801317) Paperback. Length: 256pp
Alternate historian Turtledove (The Man with the Iron Heart) opens this fantasy with Hasso Pemsel, a tough Wehrmacht captain, cornered in a Berlin museum as the Russians close in. Pemsel falls into another world, where he promptly rescues beautiful blonde half-goddess Velona from three swarthy men. Velona seduces him and explains that the blond Lenelli invaders rule over the dark native Grenye, keeping them subjugated with magic. Experienced from fighting on the Russian front, Hasso brings modern military ideas to the Lenelli before they invade the Grenye stronghold of Bucovin, but when the Grenye capture him, conversations with intelligent, lovely high priestess Drepteaza start to erode his assumptions about both races. Pemsel’s slow enlightenment breaks no new ground, but his story will appeal to fans of Turtledove’s straightforward style and military know-how.

Breakaway by Joel Shepherd
Pyr. (ISBN-13: 978-1591027423) Paperback. Length: 425pp
Cassandra Kresnov is a highly advanced hunter-killer android. She has escaped the League and fled to Callay, a member of the Federation. Because of her fighting skills she was able to save the president’s life and is now a trusted member of the security forces. However, not all Tanushans are happy to have her on their turf and Cassandra has to tread carefully. As Callay moves towards a vote on whether to break away from the Federation, confusion reigns and terrorist groups plot their own agendas. Cassandra becomes involved with two young troubleshooters for the secret service and finds out more than she ever wanted to know about the Tanushan underground and those on the fringes.
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Yeah, this is about what I would expect. It kind of reminds me of that bleach commercial with the little kids who ask, “What’s bacteria? Do I know?”