The Great Geek Manual

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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We’ve discovered that the universe is not a place; it’s a story, a story of an irreversible sequence of emergent events.

- “The Powers of the Universe” by Brian Swimme, October 31, 2010.

Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Download The Complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis from Ancient Faith.
• Listen to “Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul” by Daniel Abraham.
• Listen to “Blue Lace Agate” by Sarah Monette at Lightspeed Magazine.
• Listen to “The Milton Feinhoff Problem” by Mark Onspaugh at Journey Into…
• Listen to “Project Top Hat” by Julie Hoverson at 19 Nocturne Boulevard.
• Listen to “The Republic of the Southern Cross” by Valery Bryusov at Pseudopod.
• Listen to “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard at Clarkesworld Magazine.

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Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Listen to “Bad Dogs Escape” by James Patrick Kelly at EscapePod.
• Listen to “Black Hill” by Orrin Grey at Pseudopod.
• Listen to “Catastrophe Baker Makes First Contact” by Mike Resnick at Dunesteef.
• Listen to “Fermaville” by Paul Di Filippo at StarShipSofa.
• Listen to “How Many Miles to Babylon?” by Megan Arkenberg at Lightspeed.
• Listen to “The Man Who Lived Backwards” by Charles F. Hall at Classic Tales.
• Listen to “Read This Quickly, For You Will Only Have a Moment…” by Stephen Case at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
• Listen to “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard.
• Listen to “A Window, Clear as a Mirror” by Ferret Steinmetz at PodCastle.

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Art

• 20 “Doctor Who” Parodies
• Download Jesus riding a Dinosaur as a paper toy from DigitProp.
• The Page Turner is the latest Rube Goldberg machine from Brooklyn-based kinetic artist Joseph Herscher.
• School Yard Superheroes
• Skyrim in Legos
• Space Invaders Graffiti

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