The Great Geek Manual

From monkey to arcade. Follow the evolution of the video games player. This is why we have opposable thumbs, to grab them joysticks.

This design is available from CasuallyHardcore on an enormous range of shirt styles and colors, starting at US$15.00.

Source: Casuallyhardcore.net

I am sitting here 93 million miles from the sun on a rounded rock which is spinning at the rate of 1000 miles an hour… and my head pointing down into space with nothing between me and infinity but something called gravity which I can’t even understand, and which you can’t even buy any place so as to have some stored away for a gravityless day…

- Russell Baker in a New York Times column entitled, “Spaced Out,” May 18, 1975.

• Read the full column at The New York Times.

1922
All thirteen million telephones in North America go silent for the space of one minute at sunset during the funeral services of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is buried in a coffin built by his lab staff in a tomb carved into the solid rock of Beinn Bhreagh Mountain on his estate in Nova Scotia, Canada. To commemorate his pioneering contributions to telecommunications technology, AT&T and the Bell System suspends service at their switchboards and switching stations across Canada and the United States. Bell passed away on August 2, 1922.

1971
The US launches a satellite into lunar orbit from a manned spacecraft for the first time.

1987
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had once required media outlets to present controversial issues “fairly.”

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) introduces the PS/2 Model 25, with an 8MHz Intel 8086 CPU, a combined system unit complete with monitor, dual floppy drives (no hard drive), and reduced-size keyboard. Price: US$1,350

1988
The first shuttle mission since the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is delayed when a computer cancels the ignition of the Space Shuttle Discovery during an engine test after determining that a valve was failing to close fast enough. Both the test and the computer system were instituted since the Challenger’s launch to ensure the mission’s safety.
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Exactly my reaction. Heard about the merger through Google Reader. Researched the merger via Google Search. Voiced my opinion via Orkut and Google Groups. Net gain for Microsoft? Zero.

Source: Denver Post

Art

• Abduzeedo has posted a gallery of Beautiful Book Covers by Dan dos Santos, including more than a few you might recognize if you’ve been to a bookstore lately. (Remember back in the days when all fantasy covers were done by Darrell K. Sweet and like two other artists?)

Comics

• BoingBoing points the way to more on The sad fate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster.

Film

• Director and writer David Twohy discusses the third installment in the Riddick franchise. Evidently the problem movie forward is that he doesn’t want any more PG-13 Riddick flicks.
• John De Lancie discusses the Reboot of Star Trek.
• Movie Buzz names The Top 10 Worst Comic Book Casting Mistakes, but I would have broadened “Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool” to “Ryan Reynolds as anything.”
• Screen Junkies counts down 10 Kick-Ass Movie Preachers.
• The Wolverine Anime Trailer looks terrible. What did they do to Wolverine?

Internet

• Cracked.com points out 4 Reasons to Hate Comic-Con.
• io9 rounds up a list of Science Fiction’s Scariest Priests and Preachers.

Literature

• Free Fiction: The latest issues of Antipodean, Clarkesworld Magazine, Reflection’s Edge, and Sorcerous Signals are now available online.
• Free Fiction: The latest issue of Crossed Genres alternate history stories is out.
• Free Fiction: Listen to “Pestworld” by Colin Davies.
• Free Fiction: Read the classic short story “They Twinkled Like Jewels” by Philip José Farmer at Project Gutenberg.
• Free Fiction: Read “Glassface” by James Trimarco at Futurismic.
• Free Fiction: Read “Scarlett” by Mike Brotherton at the author’s website.
• io9 offers up their Favorite Last Lines From Science Fiction Novels.

Television

• Cracked.com speculates on 5 Cobra Commander Terror Plots That Might Actually Work… which is weird, cuz when I was twelve, I could’ve sworn they’d all work.
• Watch the classic The Real Ghostbusters episode “The Collect Call of Cathulhu” at The Retroist.

Writing

• Editor Unleashed explains Why Writers Should Consider ePublishing.
• Tor.com asks What is historical fantasy?

1596
David Fabricius discovers the first variable star, Mira, when he observes the variations in the star’s light.

1897
Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the world’s first movie camera.

1903
The New York World newspaper runs an article about Thomas Edison’s opinions on Radium and X-rays that begins on the front page. The article is entitled, “Edison Fears Hidden Perils of the X-rays.” In the article, Edison describes the injuries his laboratory employee, Clarence Dally, incurred during his research into Radium. Dally had an arm and hand amputated to remove the cancer caused by exposure to X-rays. Edison also felt that viewing the element with his own X-ray fluoroscope had harmed his eyesight two years earlier. When the focus of his left eye was disturbed he abandoned research on X-rays. Edison is quoted as saying, “I am afraid of radium and polonium too, and I don’t want to monkey with them.” Edison goes on to say, “I have had several pieces of it from Mme. Curie in Paris, and I have experimented with it. I do not see its commercial utility, but it opens up a great field of thought and scientific research. It overturns all the old theories of force and energy… I have a peculiar theory about radium, and I believe it is the correct one. I believe that there is some mysterious ray pervading the universe that is fluorescing to it. In other words, that all its energy is not self-constructed but that there is a mysterious something in the atmosphere that scientists have not found that is drawing out those infinitesimal atoms and distributing them forcefully and indestructibly.”
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’

- Concepts of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead.

Ten years ago this weekend, I saw The Blair Witch Project. I went in, basically knowing what to expect from the movie’s extensive marketing and fully realizing how the movie must end, but I still came out unwilling to walk within spitting distance of a tree for a week. To this day, I count the movie as the best horror movie I’ve ever seen, partly due to nostalgia and partly due to the movie’s highly effective psychological wind-up.

Though the “golden age” of horror films probably spanned the second half of the seventies and the early eighties, this past decade hasn’t been too shabby. New technology has allowed directors to push the envelope in movie visuals, while Generation X’s love of fantasy has infused the genre with a new aspect of magical realism that has re-invigorated the genre.

The following is a list of what I have judged to be the best horror films of the last ten years. Each inspires authentic fear with a strongly build story rather than a series of cheap tricks or fountains of blood.

10. The Ring (2002)
Though it only ranks the bottom of the list for its lack of re-watchability, the American remake of Ringu gets a nod for its exceptionally creepy atmosphere and its open-ended story. There isn’t any one “jump out of your skin” moment, but it is hands-down the most effect use of the “evil child returns from the dead” story device ever.
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