The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Community / Batman Mash-Up
• DC Comics Valentines
• Love(craft) Valentines are maddeningly cute
• Posters that (almost) trick us into thinking Phantom Menace is good
• The Video Game Humans of the Future Should Look This Awesome
• The WALL-E Builders Club formed in October 2007 as an offshoot of the R2 (yes that one) builders club, to create their own WALL-E replica. This is their current progress on the project. [Via]

Comics

• Interview: Entertainment Weekly interviews Joss Whedon about Buffy season 9.
• Interview: Scott Allie on Making “Buffy” Bold.
• How Marvel Comics screwed Jack Kirby out of millions

Film

• Interview: Daniel Radcliffe: Harry Potter Oscars snub was “snobbery”
• 10 Truly Terrifying Horror Movie Jump Scares
• Boycott the Avengers? A Slate writer discusses why Marvel’s troubled history with artists has led him to boycott the upcoming project, despite his love for Joss
• Every now and then a trailer comes along that makes u remember why we love zombie movies. Osombie is a movie about the re-animated corpse of Osama Bin Laden and the mission wherein a group of military operatives go to kill him, again. Check it out after the break and get ready for what will be an amazing ride.
• If 2012′s Oscar-nominated movie posters told the truth
• Is The Shining really about the gold standard? Using unpublished info from the Stanley Kubrick Archives as a key source, Kubrick’s Gold Story [part 1 of 4] is a film analysis that uncovers economic themes encoded in The Shining with regard to gold vs fiat monetary systems. Written,
  narrated and edited by Rob Ager
• The Most Influential Sci-Fi Films

Internet

• 10 Biggest Nerd Gatherings in the World

Literature

• Interview: Alan Lightman, author of Mr g, answers a few questions for Suvudu.
• Interview: Elizabeth Hand talks about her crime novel, Available Dark.
• Interview: J. Kelley Anderson of Casting Shadows on making room for genre fiction in the western literary canon.
• Interview: Michael Sullivan plugs Theft of Swords on The Skiffy and Fanty Show
• Interview: Peter Orullian talks to Robin Hobb about her novel City of Dragons
• Interview: Why William Gibson Distrusts Aging Futurists’ Nostalgia
• Fear and Loathing in e-Land by Ursula K. Le Guin
• What is the Right Price for an E-Book?

Science

• 6 Scientific Discoveries That Laugh in the Face of Physics

Technology

• EU is considering using drones to police Farms
• From the “life imitates Fallout” files comes MIT’s photonic crystals that could lead to “nuclear reactors” in every gadget.
• How do robots see the world? This is an experiment in found machine-vision footage, exploring the aesthetics of the robot eye.

Television

• Interview: Nichelle Nichols talks about breaking barriers in television. A black woman as a starship officer was outrageous enough in 1966, but when she kissed Kirk, she made history.
• News: Fox’s ‘House’ will end this season. [More]
• Infographic: 45 Years of Star Trek

Video Games

• Minecraft: Making Your Own Fun, One Brick At a Time

Writing

• Here’s a handy list of medieval occupations, though I can’t see George R.R. Martin ever typing the word “eggler.”

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.

1497
Nicolaus Copernicus observes the Moon eclipse the star Aldebaran.

1949
The world’s first Department of Space Medicine is established at the United States Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas, and Dr. Hubertus Strughold becomes the first professor of Space Medicine.

1967
The Star Trek episode “The Return of the Archons” first airs. (No. 21) In it, crew encounters a world with where a dysfunctional society is completely controlled by a mysterious leader named Landru. Memory Alpha entry

The Star Trek episode “Return to Tomorrow” first airs. (No. 49) In it, telepathic aliens take possession of Kirk and Spock to build new, mechanical bodies for themselves. Memory Alpha entry
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As the Internet continues to expand in volume and diversity without interruption, only a relatively small percent of its total mass will be money-making. The rest will be created and maintained out of passion, enthusiasm, a sense of civic obligation, or simply on the faith that it may later provide some economic use. High-profile portal sites like Yahoo and AOL will continue to consolidate and demand our attention (and maybe make some money), while millions of smaller sites and hundreds of millions of users do the heavy work of creating content that is used and linked. These will be paid entirely in the gift economy.

- “The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed” by Kevin Kelly, January 4, 2002.
Originally published in the Wall Street Journal.

1672
Isaac Newton presents his first paper on the science of optics to the Royal Society in London, England. He was elected a member only the previous month, in recognition of his original design for the first reflecting telescope. The paper is a report regarding his study of the colors produced by prisms entitled “New Theory about Light and Colors.”

1692
A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony declares that three teenage girls are under domination of Satan. The declaration will precipitate the Salem witch trials.

1915
The silent film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, is released. The film will go on to become the highest-grossing film of the silent film era, but it will be remembered for introducing many innovations to the film industry that will later be considered fundamental film devices, including the close-up, night photography, parallel editing, and telling a story from multiple points of view. However, the film will be one of the most controversial in history due to its crass use of black face, its portrayal of racial violence, and its outright glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Anticipating the controversy, Griffin screened the film for President Woodrow Wilson, who praised the film, calling it “history written in lightening,” but the film’s release will spark riots in Boston and Philadephia and eventually be banned in eight states, largely thanks to the efforts of the newly founded NAACP.
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Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Listen to “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia at Clarkesworld Magazine.
• Listen to “And the Hollow Space Inside” by Mari Ness at Clarkesworld Magazine.
• Listen to “The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived” by Keffy R. M. Kehrli.
• Listen to “How Pappy Got Five Acres Back and Calvin Stayed on the Farm” by B.C. Bell at Tales To Terrify.
• Listen to “Into The Depths of Illuminated Seas” by Jason Sanford at StarShipSofa.
• Listen to “The King of Rabbits and Moon Lake” by Eugie Foster at Journey Into…
• Listen to “Kulturkampf” by Anatoly Belilovsky at Cast of Wonders.
• Listen to “Lavanya and Deepika” by Shveta Thakrar at PodCastle.
• Listen to “Memorial at Copernicus” by Gray Rinehart at Redstone Science Fiction.
• Listen to “The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola” by Jason Sanford.
• Listen to “The Occupation of the Architect” by Jason Heller at Toasted Cake.
• Listen to “Universe Reef” by Tobias Buckell at Beam Me Up!.
• Listen to “Thwack That Dirigible!” by Captain Radio at Radio Drama Revival.

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1818
The Academician magazine is first published in New York City. It will become the first successful educational magazine in the U.S.

1915
The first wireless message sent from a moving train to a station is transmitted, marking the beginning of the era of mobile communications.

1932
The Neutron subatomic particle is first described in an article in the journal Nature by James Chadwick, who coined the name after he discovered it by bombarding Beryllium with alpha particles. In 1935, Chadwick will receive the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery.
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Art

• Amazing Selena cosplay
• Lucas Oil Stadium, recreated in Legos
• Mass Effect Valentines
• XXIT is an absolutely amazing Blade Runner-esque short from Stargate Studios

Comics

• Interview: Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton talk about the “The Guild: Fawkes”
• Interview: A two-and-a-half hour webchat with the great Alan Moore, wherein he talks about magic, writing, creativity, Lovecraft and horror, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, philosophy, time, his new novel, Watchmen and more…
• Details about Issues 8-10 of Buffy Season 9.

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1940
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) demonstrates its electronic color television system to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), but the technology is unimpressive and the company cancels its plans for a public demonstration. Visit the official FCC website.

The second full length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres.

1948
The first radio-controlled airplane is flown for the first time.

1957
The cryotron superconductive computer switch is introduced. Developed by Dudley Allen Buck at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the cryotron is the first practical use of superconductivity, the ability of some metals to conduct current with no resistance at temperatures below -420 degrees Fahrenheit. It will be hailed as a revolutionary step in miniaturizing room-sized computers.
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