The Great Geek Manual

Hardcover Book Releases

Bullet (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) by Laurell K. Hamilton
Berkley Hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0425234334) Length: 368 pages

Anita Blake is back in St. Louis and trying to live a normal life-as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a U. S. Marshal. There are lovers, friends and their children, school programs to attend. In the midst of all the ordinary happiness a vampire from Anita’s past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, killed in an explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, their dark creator. It’s hard to kill a god. This dark goddess has reached out to her here-in St. Louis, home of everyone Anita loves most. The Mother of All Darkness has decided she has to act now or never, to control Anita, and all the vampires in America.

The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with Anita and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to immigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken. Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing her body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can’t succeed in taking over Anita’s body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to Anita, has sent word: “Run if you can…”
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Art

• CosGeek points the way to galleries of photos from last weekend’s Anime North 2010 Convention.
• It looks as if BP’s top kill is Aquaman. They’ll be after Namor next.
• They may not fly, but Iron Man Sneakers will make you feel like a super hero.
• Twilight Zone ABCs by Montygog.
• Ultra-Modern-Lfe Training Lab is offering CCTV Stickers to remind you that your webcam is watching you.

Film

• GeekDad offers Proof the Main Star Wars Characters Are Dumber Than a Bag of Hammers. (As if anyone needs it.)
• Moviefone chooses the Top 25 Movie Fight Scenes.
• PopCrunch includes a lot of genre in its list of The 15 Best and Worst Series Finales in TV History, including X-Files and Lost.
• Popdose offers an interesting critical essay explores the ongoing cinematic zombie apocalypse zeitgeist.

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1831
English navigator and explorer James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula in the northern Canada while exploring the Arctic.

1869
Thomas Edison of Boston, Massachusetts, is granted his first patent for an “electrographic vote recorder.” (US No. 90,646) The device will enable legislators to register their votes for or against an issue by dialing a switch to the left or right. Before his death, Edison will hold 1,093 U.S. patents, becoming widely known as one of the most prolific inventors in history.

1880
The Connecticut Telephone Company installs the first public pay telephone booth in the United States at its offices in New Haven. To use the phone, customers need to pay a toll to the phone’s attendant.
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…modern technology is a major evolutionary transition – as important as when the first cells came together to form multicellular organisms. It would be astonishing if that occurred without disrupting existing life.

- Gregory Stock, as quoted in “Cloning. Problem? No problem.”
First published in Wired, September 1997.