The Great Geek Manual

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.

If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.

- Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, 1999.

1404
The English Parliament passes the Act of Multipliers, forbidding alchemists from using transmutation to create or multiply precious metals, specifically gold and silver. The Act comes in response to widespread fear that alchemists would succeed in their projects and ruin the nation or install a despot. In 1689, Robert Boyle lobbied for repeal of the Act.

1610
Galileo Galilei discovers what will later be named Callisto, the fourth satellite of Jupiter. Galileo names the Moon along with the three he discovered earlier the “Medicean planets,” after the Medici family, and numerically as I, II, III and IV. Galileo’s naming system will be used until the mid-1800′s, when they will come to be referred to as Galilean moons, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io.
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Chance favors the connected mind.

- Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, 2010.

Art

• Concept art for The Dawn Treader.
• Own your very own Companion Cube
• Praskovya Pelmeshkina has posted an AMAZING gallery of Hermione Granger cosplay photos
• What good would kids be if they weren’t such adorable cosplay accessories?

Comics

• News: China Mieville to write new title for D.C.’s new 52.
• Big spoilers on happenings in Buffy comics continuity.
• Girl in a Comic Book Shop

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1773
The first public museum in America is established in Charleston, South Carolina.

1881
The first commercially successful long distance line, running forty-five miles between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island, opens for business.

1896
The first X-ray photo in the U.S. is made by Dr. Henry Louis Smith in Davidson, North Carolina. Smith shot a bullet into the hand of a human cadaver and then made a fifteen minute x-ray exposure of the hand to reveal the bullet.
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You probably hate the idea that human judgment can be improved or even replaced by machines, but you probably hate hurricanes and earthquakes too. The rise of machines is just as inevitable and just as indifferent to your hatred.

- “Data Analytics: So, What’s Your Algorithm?” by Dennis K. Berman, January 4, 2012.
Originally published by the Wall Street Journal

Skyrim is awesome, but the game’s social interactions don’t quite translate to the real world. I found that out the hard way after I tried to put a bucket over the head of the cashier at Target the other day.

1898
A. E. Keith and the brothers John and Charles Erickson, employees of Almon Strowger, receive a patent for the rotary dial. (US No. 597,062)

1902
Popular Mechanics magazine is published for the first time. The magazine has five paying subscribers and will be purchased by a few hundred newsstand customers at a nickel a copy. In September 1903, the magazine will have become sufficiently popular to begin publishing monthly issues.

1935
Amelia Earhart takes off from Honolulu to become the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and California. She will land in Oakland the next day. Three years earlier, Earhart will become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
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