The Great Geek Manual

Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Listen to “Golubash (Wine-Blood-War-Story)” by Catherynne M. Valente.
• Listen to “If It Ain’t Broke” by Maya Bonhnhoff at Beam Me UP.
• Listen to “Killing the Morrow” by Robert Reed at Drabblecast.
• Listen to “The Most Precious of Treasures” (Part 1) by Desmond Warzel.
• Listen to “The Orchard of Hanging Trees” by Nicole Cushing at Pseudopod.
• Listen to “The Rowan Gentleman” by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.
• Listen to “The Steam Dancer (1896)” by Caitlín R. Kiernan at Lightspeed Magazine.
• Listen to “There Are No Great Truths Here” by D T Friedman at Toasted Cake.
• Listen to “Vicar of Mars” by Gwyneth Jones at StarShipSofa.

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[...] the sciences must recognize that their truths are not the only truths. No knowledge has a monopoly on knowledge. That simple idea will be the starting premise of any fourth culture. As Karl Popper, an eminent defender of science, wrote, ‘It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it is beyond our reach. There is no authority beyond the reach of criticism.

- Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, 2008.

Art

• Mad Men / Batman Mash-Up
• Pac-Man: Origins

Comics

• News: Convicted Terrorist Claims Batman and Comics Inspired Him To Act

Film

• Interview: “Cabin In The Woods” director Drew Goddard: “Most reality television would be better if every now and then a monster would rage through there and just eat some people.”

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We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse ‘negative capability.’ He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had ‘the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ Keats realized that just because something can’t be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.

- Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, 2008.

Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered ‘useless,’ will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously.

- John Maeda
As cited in “The universe will fly like a bird,” December 14, 2010.

Some scholars have equated the origin of “civilization” with the origin of writing. Laypeople sometimes take this equation to mean that with writing humanity put aside its barbarous past and started behaving in gentlemanly fashion, sipping tea and remembering to say “please”. And indeed, this may be only a mild caricature of what some nineteenth-century scholars actually meant by the equation: writing equals Greece equals Plato; illiteracy equals barbarism equals Attila the Hun. But, in truth, if you add literacy to Attila the Hun, you don’t get Plato. You get Genghis Khan. During the thirteenth century, he administered what even today is the largest continuous land empire in the history of the world. And he could do so only because he had the requisite means of control: a script that, when carried by his pony express, amounted to the fastest large-scale information-processing technology of his era. One consequence was to give pillaging a scope beyond Attila’s wildest dreams. Information technology, like energy technology or any other technology, can be a tool for good or bad. By itself, it is no guarantor of moral progress or civility.

- Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright, January 9, 2001.

Comediva has launched a new series of choose-your-own adventure style “speed dating” videos featuring dorks, nerds, and geeks cosplaying characters such as Darth Vader, Starbuck, Hermione, and Dr. Who, among others. It’s both hilarious and a little too on the nose… If you’ve ever flirted at an after-con party, you may already have fallen victim to some of these pick-up lines.

Project Glass probably won’t run on the Windows OS, but if it does, here’s what your life might end up looking like while using the product.