The Great Geek Manual

Book: My Dead Body
ISBN-13: 978-0345495891

Author: Charlie Huston
Series: Joe Pitt Casebooks
Publisher: Del Rey
Genre: Hard-boiled noir / Horror
Release: October 13, 2009
Length: 336 pages (Hardcover)

Rating: A- (95/100)

Verdict

Charlie Huston is the cure for what’s ailing vampires today. He’s single-handedly succeeded in putting the starch back into the genre and breathed a whole new life into the best traditions of Raymond Chandler. And while the entire Joe Pitt series is highly recommended reading for fans of hard-boiled noir, horror, pulp fiction, or urban fantasy, it needs to be said that My Dead Body is Huston’s piece de resistance.

Nowhere are you going to find a grittier or more action-packed noir novel, and if you’re a fan of the genre, that should be all that needs to be said.

Pros: Huston has a flair for razor sharp dialog. Big screen action sequences. Gritty, realistic characters. No sparkly vampire angst.

Cons: Dialogue can become a bit confusing due to Pitt’s choice of punctuation.

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The enlightenment idea of privacy is breaking apart under the strain of new technologies, social tools and the emergence of the database state. We cannot hold back the tide, but we can use it as an opportunity to rethink what we understand by ‘personality’, how we engage and interact with others and where the boundaries can be put between the public and private.

Those of us who are ahead of the curve when it comes to the adoption and use of technologies that undermine the old model of privacy have much to teach those who will come after us, and can offer advice and support to those who might be unhappy to have their movements, eating habits, friendships and patterns of media consumption made available to all. But every Twitterer, Tumblr, Dopplr or Brightkite user at Lift is sharing more data with more people than even the FBI under Hoover or the Stasi at the height of its powers could have dreamed of. And we do so willingly, hoping to benefit in unquantifiable ways from this unwarranted – in all senses – disclosure.

I’ll argue that we are in the vanguard of creating not just new forms of social organisation but new ways of being human.

- “The Death of Privacy and Why We Should Welcome It,” remarks made by Bill Thompson at the Lift Conference, January 18, 2009.

399 BCE
The philosopher Socrates, who will widely be credited with the laying the foundations of Western philosophy, is sentenced to death after being found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens.

1897
Ferdinand Braun publishes a paper in the journal Annalen der Physik und Chemie describing his “Braun tube,” the first cathode-ray oscilloscope. He developed the oscilloscope to record and study the time dependence of alternating currents. Cathode-ray tubes had previously been characterized by uncontrolled rays. Braun produced a narrow stream of electrons, guided by means of alternating voltage, that can be traced on a fluorescent screen. A coil wrapped around the Braun tube produces a vertical deflection of the electron beam. Horizontal deflection of the image to create a “time” axis is achieved by a small rapidly rotating mirror placed in front of the CRT.

1903
The first teddy bear is introduced in America. It is made by two Russian immigrants, Morris and Rose Michtom, who own a toy and novelty store in Brooklyn, New York. They coined the term “teddy bear” from President Theodore Roosevelt’s nickname, “Teddy.” While bear hunting in Mississippi in 1902, Roosevelt decided to spare the life of a bear cub which had been orphaned during the hunt. The event was the subject of a cartoon in the Washington Post seen by the Michtoms. Inspired by the cartoon, Mrs. Michtom made a toy bear which became enormously popular with the public in short order.
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278 AD
Saint Valentine is beheaded and buried at the Via Flaminia, north of Rome. Learn more about the history of Valentine’s Day.

498 AD
This date is sometimes cited as the first observance of St. Valentine’s Day by the declaration of Pope Gelasius. Read more about the history of Valentine’s Day.

1876
Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent on his telephone apparatus, the “speaking telegraph,” less than three hours before Elisha Gray files a caveat at the Patent Office for a similar device. The patent will be granted three weeks later, on March 3rd. After a long legal battle, the United States Supreme Court will eventually uphold Bell’s patent, leaving him the official inventor of the telephone.

1888
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for a “Telephone-Transmitter.” (US No. 278,044)
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The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on Love states that it is far too complicated to define. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: Avoid, if at all possible.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film, 2005

1588
Tycho Brahe first outlines his “Tychonic system” of the structure of the solar system. The Tychonic system is a hybrid, combining the basic idea of the geocentric system of Ptolemy with the heliocentric ideas of Nicholas Copernicus. In his De mundi aethorei recentioribus phaenomenis, Brahe retains Aristotelian physics, keeps the the Sun and Moon revolving about Earth in the center of the universe and depicts a shell of fixed stars was centered on the Earth. Like Copernicus, he agrees that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolve about the Sun, thus explaining the motions of the heavens without “crystal spheres” carrying the planets through complex Ptolemaic epicycles.

1633
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition, during which he will be charged with professing the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Enemies of Galileo had convinced Pope Urban VIII that the sometimes foolish character that ineptly defends the Ptolemaic system in Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Simplicio) was a mockery of the Pope himself. A document (later proved to be a forgery) in which Cardinal Bellarmine forbids Galileo from discussing Copernican ideas is also produced. Galileo is charged with disobeying Bellarmine’s order and misleading the censors who had published his book. Threatened with torture, Galileo will have no choice but to admit guilt, and “abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies…”
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Art

• Bill Shrink offers an infographic examines Valentine’s Day By the Numbers.
• Comic Alliance has posted a funny gallery of G.I. Joe themed Valentines.
• Fandomania has an excellent round-up of BioShock fan artwork collected from around Deviant Art. (Much of it very dark.)
• Marc Gabbana is the artist behind the New Bajaj DTSi commercial robot designs. Check out the concept art.

Comics

• Heartless Doll has compiled a list of 10 Graphic Novels You Should Pick Up with Twilight. Personally, I think most of these beat Twilight, hands down.

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1855
Michigan State University, the first land grant college in the United States, is established. It will become the model for all other land grant colleges.

1877
The first news dispatch using a telephone in the US, is sent from Salem, Massachusetts to the Boston Globe.

1884
Thomas Edison is issued patents for “An Electric Generator or Motor,” “Insulation of Railroad tracks Used for Electrical Circuits,” “Incandescent Electric Lamp,” and an “Electrical Meter.”

1887
Thomas Edison creates the first sound recording on a foil-wrapped cylinder with the Edisonphone. The recording is of Edison reciting “Mary had a Little Lamb.”
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