The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Comic Alliance mashes up X-Men and Mad Men.
• Fandomania has posted a gallery of Firefly artwork from DevianArt.
• io9 has posted a gallery of images of nature reclaiming a creepy Post Apocalyptic Disney World.

Comics

• MTV has a preview of the new Zack Whedon Dr. Horrible comic series!

Film

• Interview: Michael Caine discusses his upcoming “urban western.”
• News: Rumors claim that director Bryan Singer has begun preproduction on a proposed new Battlestar Galactica movie.
• The new movie posters for Kick-Ass are out and they kind of… well, you know.
• ScreenHead counts down the Top 10 sci-fi films that were ahead of their time, starting with Gattaca.

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Damn straight. That’s why Jesus sits at the top of the hierarchy. Eat of his flesh, bitch.

Source: The Huffington Post

1842
The first US design patent is issued for typefaces and borders to George Bruce of New York City. (US No. D1) This new form of patent was authorized by Act of Congress on August 29, 1842.

1921
Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect.

1946
Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) is shut down for refurbishment and a memory upgrade. It will be transferred to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in 1947.

1957
Gordon Gould records conjecture on the principles of what he calls a laser in a notebook on a sleepless Saturday night. The following Wednesday, he will have a notary witness and date his notebook in which he describes what he calls “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” or, the “laser.” However, it will take more than thirty years of litigation before Gould will receive recognition for his concept.
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Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties – all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion – these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

- David Foster Wallace

Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken.

- Orson Scott Card

1602
The Bodleian Library is established at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.

1804
The first US patent for a separable electric attachment plug is issued to Harvey Hubbell of Bridgeport, Connecticut. (US No. 774,250) It screws into a light socket so that homes with the new electric lighting technology could also make use of other useful appliances.

1895
While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray at Würzburg University.

1919
The first large machine switching exchange in the Bell system is brought into service in Norfolk, Virginia. This exchange uses the step-by-step system and is installed by the Automatic Electric Company of Chicago for the Bell System.
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I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 1815.