The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Travis Pitts is selling Sci-Fi Jesus Fish stickers on Etsy.
• Unreality has posted A Wicked Gallery of Little Red Riding Hood Re-Imagined.
• Virtual Fun Zone has a gallery of Japanese Trains Decorated with Anime. I think that some of these would really spruce up New York subways.

Comics

• News: Patton Oswalt to write ‘Firefly’ comic book

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105 A.D.
In China, Ts’ai Lun, an official of the Han Dynasty Chinese Imperial Court, invents the world’s first paper from a mixture of bamboo, fish nets, mulberry, and rags. He will eventually become wealthy after he present his paper to the Emperor Han Ho Ti.

1702
The first regularly printed English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant is launched by Edward Mallet in London, England. The paper consists of a single sheet with two columns. Printed in the rooms above the White Hart pub on Fleet Street, the paper will run until 1735.

1811
The Luddite riots break out in Nottingham, England. Driven by poverty and insufferable living conditions, a group of laborers launch an assault on the factory where they work, destroying sixty-three lace and stocking manufacturing frames that threaten to render many of their jobs unnecessary. The outbreak occurs in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, when starvation and unemployment are running rampant across Europe. Over the next three weeks, armed mobs of Luddites will continue to root out the frames, destroying two hundred of the devices in all.
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…the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture.

- Paul Virilio in “Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio: The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space,” October 18, 2000.

Hardcover Book Releases

Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel by James Patterson
Hiveborn (The Earthborn Wars) by Paul Collins
The Midnight Mayor: Or, the Inauguration of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin
The River Kings’ Road: A Novel of Ithelas by Liane Merciel
The Universal Essence by Dean Lincoln Minton

Paperback Book Releases

Caliphate by Tom Kratman
How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce
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The Economist has run a great article on the proliferation of data being generated by the information economy and the challenges it poses. It’s a brief but thought-provoking piece entitled Data, data everywhere written by Kenneth Cukier.

The world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

1797
Thomas Jefferson presents a paper on the Megalonyx to the American Philosophical Society. It will be published as “A Memoir on the Discovery of Certain Bones of a Quadruped of the Clawed Kind in the Western Parts of Virginia,” Transactions of American Philosophical Society 4:255-256, along with an account by Caspar Wistar (1761-1818). This is arguably the first American publication in paleontology, but it is certainly the only paleontology paper written by Jefferson. In 1822, this huge extinct sloth will be named “Megalonyx jeffersoni” by a French naturalist. It is a bear-sized ground sloth species, over two meters tall, which was widespread in North America during the last Ice Age. Read more about Jefferson’s Ground Sloth at Yukon Beringia.

1849
Abraham Lincoln becomes the first United States president to apply for a patent. (US No. 6,469) The patent is described as a method of “Buoying vessels over shoals.” Read the patent application at Google Patents Search.
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The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call ‘the information bomb’ associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed ‘the integral accident’ that is the continuation of politics by other means.

- Paul Virilio in “Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio: The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space,” October 18, 2000.

The Symphony of Science has released a fifth installment in its series, entitled “The Poetry of Reality.” While it isn’t my favorite, I love the fact that they’re not resting on their laurels. Each of their video is more ambitious than the last.

This video features 12 scientists, subtitles for the auto-tune challenged, and some of the best visual yet seen in the the series. Enjoy.