The Great Geek Manual

There are things in the dark, things adults deny but children are right to fear…

- “Night Stalker,” May 30, 2006.

1675
German mathematician Leibniz introduces the long s (∫) to denote an integral in calculus equations.

1878
Willigot T. Odhner is granted a patent for a calculating machine that performs multiplications with repeated additions. The patent is a modified and compact version of the Gottfried von Leibniz stepped wheel.

1945
The first mass-produced ballpoint pen available in the US, the Reynolds’ Rocket pen, goes on sale at Gimbels Department Stores in New York for US$12.95 almost fifty-seven years to the day after the first U.S. patent for a ballpoint pen was granted . The item is an immediate success, selling US$100,000 worth in the first day on the market alone. The design is that of Laszlo Biró, discovered by Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, while in Buenos Aires on unrelated business. He saw the Biro pen in a store and recognized the pen’s sales potential. He brought samples of the product back to America and, ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, the Eversharp Company, he began manufacturing the product four months later. The pens are extremely unreliable but incredibly popular. By 1948, the price of ink pens will drop to less than fifty cents, and Reynolds’ company will fail in 1951.

My only guess is that this is some sort of fallout shelter, some sort of very happy fallout shelter. Either that or its a lab where they’re trying to engineer humans that can fly. In either case, I don’t think I’d walk through that door.

Art

• Alex CF is selling The Collected Eldritch horrors of Merrylin, an amazing model specimen kit.
• Check out photos from year’s annual Zombie Walk in Toronto. The zombie baby is particularly kick-ass.
• Hilarious Comic Strip Mashups!
• MSNBC has posted a gallery of photos in an article entitled How to build a steampunk haunted house.

Comics

• Comic Alliance has discovered what may be the Best Comic Book Halloween Costume ever.
• MTV rounds up Five Comic Book Pumpkinheads For Halloween.

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Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

- Mason Cooley

1538
The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is established.

1636
A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what will later become the United States, The President and Fellows of Harvard College, which will later be renamed Harvard University.

1868
Thomas Edison applies for his first patent, for an electrical vote recorder.

1914
The first of what will later be known as zippers, a hookless fastener developed by Gideon Sundback, first goes on sale as the “Hookless No. 2.”

1946
A five-man commission of civilians is appointed by President Harry S. Truman to become The Atomic Energy Commission, which was established by the August 1, 1946 US Atomic Energy Act. The commission’s mission is to develop and utilize atomic energy for the public welfare, increasing the standard of living, strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and promoting world peace. The commission will first convene on November 13, 1946.
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Art

• Print out your own Vintage Poison Labels! They’re great for labeling all of that Halloween Candy stash.
• The Wall Street Journal has run a nice photo essay on the Monroeville, Pa. zombie crawl.

Comics

• io9 argues the 4 Reasons Why Zombies And Superheroes Don’t Mix.
• Wow. I just discovered what may be the best webcomic ever, 2D Goggles. Check out the interview with author Sydney Padua at Tor.com.

Film

• Watch the first five minutes of Colin, the super-microbudget U.K. zombie flick told from our zombie’s point of view.
• Which was better, Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch? The first one was more fun. The second one was (nominally) more subtle.

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Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

- “Supernatural Horror in Literature” by H. P. Lovecraft, 1927.