The Great Geek Manual

1904
In a letter published in the journal Nature, Canadian nuclear physicist Harriet Brooks records her observations of a peculiar type of volatility demonstrated by an active deposit of radium immediately after its removal from the emanation. According to the letter, Harriet Brooks is the first person to observe the recoil of the atomic nucleus as nuclear particles are emitted during radioactive decay.

The Trans-Siberian Railway, one of the most ambitious engineering projects in history, is officially completed, linking European Russia through Siberia to the Far East with 4,607 miles through seven time zones. Its completion took thirteen years of work by thousand of workers, and its construction cost approximately 350 million rubles, all told.
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We were wanderers from the beginning.

- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan, 1994.

Art

• 8-Bit Sand Sculpture Game Tribute
• The artwork for the new A Song of Ice and Fire 2012 Calendar is fantastic.
• The Cosgeek has posted some of the most painfully cute cosplay you’ve ever seen in the form of Captain Kirk and Doctor Who
• The Geek Art Gallery has posted a gallery of Banksy’s best known street art.
• How to make your very own Captain America Duct Tape Shield
• Steampunk? How about Steampug.
• This is how big a geek I am. Cleaning out my desktop this morning, I realized that I had over thirty cosplay lip sync videos laying around. I don’t think most people have even seen a cosplay-themed lip sync video, much less gone through the work of downloading a mess of them locally. Anyhoo… here’s one of the latest to surface: Cosplay Fever: Raise Your Glass.

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What is the Internet doing to our brains? Dr. Paul Howard Jones distills 178 scientific studies to examine whether there’s any merit to the popular fears about what technology is doing to us. More in these 7 essential books on the future of the Internet, as well as the most recent EDGE question, asking 172 contemporary thought-leaders how the Internet is changing the way they think.

1872
The U.S. Patent Office awards the first patent for wireless telegraphy to Mahlon Loomis.

1903
The Ford Motor Company ships its first car.

1960
Sirimavo Bandaranaike is elected the Prime Minister of Ceylon, becoming the world’s first elected female head of state.
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If I’m going to be happy anywhere,
Or achieve greatness anywhere,
Or learn true secrets anywhere,
Or save the world anywhere,
Or feel strongly anywhere,
Or help people anywhere,
I may as well do it in reality.

- The “Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe” by Eliezer Yudkowsky
First published in “If You Demand Magic, Magic Won’t Help,” March 22, 2008.
First posted to LessWrong.

A Jedi robot that can duel with humans — what could go wrong? Students at Stanford University have created a “JediBot” that can fight a duel against a human opponent. It uses a Microsoft Kinect sensor to track its opponent’s lightsaber, and then counterattacks whenever it makes contact.

The JediBot isn’t the fastest sparring partner you can find, delivering one swing every two to three seconds, but it does mean you don’t need to have any friends to practice your lightsaber skills.

I’m just waiting for someone to cross the JediBot’s sensor and software with a quadrocopter to create the lightsaber practice droid from Star Wars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks on the future of NASA. No other part of government has the inspirational bang for the buck that the space agency has, but we are currently squandering it.