The Great Geek Manual

1831
At age 22, Charles Darwin embarks from Plymouth harbor aboard the British Naval ship HMS Beagle on what will become a groundbreaking voyage of scientific discovery. The Captain, Robert FitzRoy, will sail to the southern coast of South America to conduct an official government survey. Just out of university, Darwin took an unpaid position as the ship’s naturalist. He plans to be at sea for two years, but the voyage will last five years, making stops in Brazil, the Galapogos Islands, and New Zealand. From the observations he will make during the voyage, Darwin will develop his theory of evolution through natural selection, which he will publish twenty-eight years after the Beagle leaves Plymouth.

1922
The Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō becomes the first purpose-built aircraft carrier ever commissioned anywhere in the world.

1932
The world’s largest cinema Radio City Music Hall, which boasts 6,200 seats, is opened by NBC in New York. Over a hundred thousand people gather outside the cinema, waiting for admission.

1940
Universal Pictures releases the science fiction comedy The Invisible Woman, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and starring Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, and John Howard, to US theaters. In it, an attractive model with an ulterior motive volunteers to test an experimental invisibility machine. IMDB listing

1968
The Apollo 8 returns to Earth after becoming first crewed mission to reach the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., and William Anders made ten orbits of the Moon on Christmas Eve before their return.
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One of humanity’s prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs. If the total scheme of nature required man to be a specialist she would have made him so by having him born with one eye and a microscope attached to it.

- “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” by Buckminster Fuller, 1969.

It’s Boxing Day across the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as the first day of Kwanzaa.

1865
The first US patent for a coffee percolator (US No. 51,741) is issued to James H. Mason of Franklin, Massachusetts.

1878
Electric lighting is installed in a store for the first time in America, at the Grand Depot department store of Philadelphia, owned by John Wanamaker. Eight dynamos provide the electrical power to run twenty-eight arc lamps.

1898
Marie Curie and her husband announce the isolation of the element Radium, named for its extreme radioactivity, as the result of experiments with pitchblende, a common uranium ore, from which they had previously isolated Polonium. Curie had observed that the ore was more radioactive than refined Uranium, and concluded that there was another even more radioactive element mixed in with the ore. During the years between 1899 and 1902, Marie Curie dissolved, filtered and repeatedly crystallized nearly three tons of pitchblende with the goal of refining a sample of the element. The result was about 0.1 gram of Radium, which was enough for a spectroscopic examination to determine the exact atomic weight of Radium. She will be awarded a second Nobel Prize in part for the discovery, along with the discovery of Polonium, in 1911.

1906
The world’s first full-length feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, is presented at the Melbourne Town Hall in Australia, where it had been filmed at a cost of £450. The subject of the movie is Ned Kelly, a bushranger, or bandit, who lived from 1855 to 1880. The film’s approximate reel length is 1219.2 metres (4,000 feet), and it precedes the world’s next feature film, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation by nine years. IMDB listing Running time: 1 hr 10 mins
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What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings. Feelings matter, of course, but the first principle of skepticism is not to fool ourselves, and feelings—both positive and negative—too often trump reason. In the end, reality must take precedence over fantasy, regardless of how it makes us feel.

- “Kool-Aid Psychology: Realism versus Optimism” by Michael Shermer, December 18, 2009.

Art

• Naldz Graphics has posted a gallery of 33 Unique Examples of Various Santas collected from around Deviant Art.
• Marc Simonetti shares his vision of the non-Euclidean undersea city R’lyeh, as a Cthulhu Wallpaper.
• Women’s Day has a gallery of Gingerbread Houses that you would almost regret tearing apart to eat.

Film

• News: Torrents are bringing down the movie industry… Hollywood eyes record $10 billion box office for 2009… Wait WTF?
• Ain’t it Cool News reviews The Science of Avatar.
• Filmoculous has compiled an enormous list of 2009 Lists, including many of the year’s best books, films, and television.
• Mashable names its picks for the 10 Best Geek Movies for a Cozy Night In.
• MovieMaker Magazine has an excellent article in which director Terry Gilliam shares his advice for would-be directors.
• SciFi Wire explains How Heath Ledger’s last film Parnassus nearly died with him.
• Screen Rant looks back at 10 Movie Events That Shaped the Decade.
• Some people are asking Does Avatar Contain Hidden Messages?

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352
The first confirmed celebration of Christmas takes place.

1818
The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. It was written the day prior.

1939
The character and story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is created by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward stores.

CBS radio broadcasts A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It’s the first time it has ever been read on the radio.

1959
Sony launches their first transistor-based television set, model TV-301, in Japan.
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Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer… Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?

- Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

This is an amazing short film strongly reminiscent of the Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours.” I think that it carries an appropriately anti-consumer message for the holiday season.

Source: The Alma Website