The Great Geek Manual

Book: Isis
ISBN-13: 978-1593155407

Author: Douglas Clegg
Series: Prequel to the Harrowing House Series
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Genre: Horror / Dark Fantasy
Release: September 29, 2009
Length: 128 pages (Hardcover)

Rating: B (85 / 100)

Verdict

Isis is a beautifully illustrated novella perfect for a bit of late night Autumn reading.

Children of the eighties are likely to find that Douglas Clegg’s simple tale coupled with Glenn Chadbourne’s eerie illustrations evoke nostalgic memories of Alvin Schwartz and other childhood campfire favorites, while the book serves as a nice introduction to Clegg’s Harrow House series for fans of the gothic, who are sure to be drawn in by this case of The Secret Garden gone wrong.

Pros: Beautifully illustrated. Fairytale-like storytelling. Highly atmospheric.

Cons: It’s almost too short to justify selling individually. It’s ending is too open-ended.

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1858
Donati’s comet discovered by Giovanni Battista Donati, becomes the first comet to be photographed. It is a bright comet that developed a spectacular curved dust tail with two thin gas tails, captured by an English commercial photographer, William Usherwood, using a portrait camera.

1924
Two two-seat Douglas World Cruiser (DWC) planes set down in Seattle, Washington after completing the first round-the-world flight in history. The planes, the Chicago and the New Orleans, were developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company for the US Army Air Service specifically for the purpose of attempting to fly around the world. Four of the planes had departed from Seattle on April 4, 1924, but the Seattle crashed in Alaska and the Boston was damaged beyond repair while crossing the Atlantic. Over the 175 days of their expedition, the Chicago and the New Orleans set down have traveled 23,942 nautical miles (44,342km). Read more at the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

1928
Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory. The discovery will later become known as penicillin.

1944
The first musical comedy on television, Boys from Boise, is broadcast in the US.
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We ought not to forget that when physicists say a photon scattered from an electron, they are discussing that which cannot be discussed. We can see the tracks in a cloud chamber, but we cannot see an electron. Metaphors in science—although a critical part of our reasoning and discovery—should be handled with caution, and with a clear knowledge of the limits of our sensory experience of the world. We are blind people, imagining what we don’t see.

- A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit by Alan Lightman, January 18, 2005.

1822
Jean-François Champollion announces that he has successfully deciphered the Rosetta stone, a stone slab dating from the Ptolemaic era.

1825
The first locomotive to haul a passenger train is operated by George Stephenson’s Stockton & Darlington line in England. The engine “Locomotion No. 1″ pulls thirty-four wagons and one solitary coach on its journey of twenty-one miles from Shildon, via Darlington to Stockton in County Durham.

1854
The steamship Arctic sinks with three hundred people on board, becoming the first great disaster in the Atlantic Ocean.

1905
The journal Annalen der Physik publishes the physics paper “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?” by Albert Einstein, which first introduces the famous mass–energy equivalence equation E=MC².
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To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.

- The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall, 1928.

1580
Sir Francis Drake first circumnavigates the globe.

1887
Émile Berliner receives a patent for the Gramophone. (US No. 372,786)

1903
The New Zealand Wireless Telegraphy Act receives Royal Assent from the Governor of New Zealand. The act is a pre-emptive move to give the state a monopoly on wireless operations, as, at this time, there is are no wireless transmissions. The act established that the penalty for unauthorized wireless transmission or reception is £500.

1908
In one of the earliest known examples of software bundling, Edison Phonographs advertised in the Saturday Evening Post come with recordings of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
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Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

- Tim Leary

If I ever took up a hobby as rustic as camping, this is exactly what it would look like. Seriously, am I the only one here with childhood fantasies of living in a library/bookstore?