The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Blastr points the way to 81 amazing sci-fi wallpapers for your desktop.
• Mollie Johanson is offering a range of adorable bookmarks to download and print.
• Star Wars probe droid by Phil Memmer.
• Steve McCurry has begun posting photos of people around the world reading books.
• Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked.
• World Famous Design Junkies has posted a gallery of posters from movies featured on MST3K.

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1609
Galileo Galilei first demonstrates his telescope.

1889
The first ship-to-shore wireless message received in the U.S. is, “Sherman is sighted.” The message, sent from Lightship No. 70, announces the arrival of the U.S. Army troopship Sherman from the battlefields of the Spanish-American War to a crowd assembled at the Cliff House in San Francisco, California. This is the first nineteenth century use of wireless telegraphy, which will later be known as radio, outside of England.

1956
Bell Laboratories announces their experiment with a “picture phone” transmission that sends pictures along with sound over regular telephone lines.
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The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, 1988.

565
St. Columba allegedly saves the life of a Pict who was being attacked by a monster in Loch Ness. The account will later be recorded in the book Life of St. Columba by Adamnan. It is the beginning of the Loch Ness Monster myth. Adamnan recounts the event in the book, “…(He) raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, “Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast.”

1849
In the first air raid in history, Austria launches a flight of pilotless balloons against the city of Venice.
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For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk. We learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

- Stephen Hawking
Quoted in a 1993 British Telecom Ad and Pink Floyd’s 1994 Keep Talking.

1888
William Seward Burroughs of St. Louis, Missouri is granted four patents for the first successful “Calculating-Machine.” (US No. 388,116-388,119) One year after making his first patent application on January 10, 1885, he incorporated his business as the American Arithmometer Corporation, with a capitalization of US$100,000. Within a year, he will produce fifty machines. The machines will ultimately prove impractically difficult to use, but Burroughs will continue to improve on his design, eventually becoming a pioneer of the calculator industry.
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The Internet enables a new kind of equality of power that allows us to think about how we can reengineer our institutions – not simply for the sake of talk, but as a means to an end of achieving things in the world better, faster, and in new and creative ways to attack the complex problems that we confront.

- “Collaborative Democracy: Beth Noveck on Reengineering Civic Life” by Hassan Masum, August 11, 2010.

Art

• Alice in Wonderland Executioner concept art by Michael Kutsche.
• Buy your own Chewie and Han t-shirt by Chris Wahl now at Shirtoid!
• Kenny Keil’s Rap and Comics Fusion
• Virtual Shackles unveils Cataclysm Ultimate Collector’s Edition. [Humor]

Comics

• Interview: Comic Alliance holds a round-table discussion on the Manga industry.

Cross-Media

• Do Today’s Superheroes Send the Wrong Messages To Boys?

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