The Great Geek Manual

1885
French scientist Louis Pasteur and his colleagues inject the first of fourteen daily doses of rabbit spinal cord suspensions containing progressively inactivated rabies virus into nine year old Joseph Meister, who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog two days prior. The immunization will be successful. This marks the beginning of the modern era of immunization.

1905
The fingerprints of John Walker become the first to be exchanged by police officials in Europe and America. Law enforcement units in London and St. Louis, Missouri make the exchange.

1920
A radio compass is first used for aircraft navigation. In a test of the radio compass as an aid to navigation, an F5L leaves Hampton Roads and flies directly to the battleship Ohio (BB 12), ninety-four miles at sea in a position unknown to the pilot. Without landing, the plane makes the return trip to Hampton Roads, Virginia, this time navigating by signals from Norfolk, Virginia.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

There is more than one way to burn a book.
And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

- Ray Bradbury, American science fiction author.
The 1979 Coda to his book, “Fahrenheit 451“

1687
Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the three volume explanation of Newton’s laws of motion. Read Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica online.

1865
The world’s first maximum speed law is enacted in England. The speed limit of 2mph in town and 4mph in the country is imposed under the Locomotives and Highways Act.

1879
A near-complete skeleton of a Mastodon is discovered near Newburgh, New York, by a farmer’s son while digging a ditch. The area had been a bog until drained and cultivated fifty years earlier. From a five-foot deep trench over the next three days, neighbors unearthed about two hundred petrified bones, including ribs, spine, legs, feet, and a skull with its teeth and lower jaw in tact. The find will be reported in The New York Times on July 8th and 9th.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

- Erma Bombeck, American author and columnist

• 15 Unusually Brilliant Book Shelving Systems from the Web Urbanist
• 65 things that look like Pac-Man for the game-obsessed.
• A 150 foot-wide crop circle representing Pi appeared in a barley field near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, England.
• Enjoy puns? Check out this gallery of the 50 Best Pun Establishments at VH1. (The Merchant of Tennis is a little over the head of their average viewer, I think.)
• PCMag outlines 8 Geeky Ways to Save Gas.
• The top ten IT health risks and how to properly combat them.
• Three useful Firefox 3 ‘awesome bar’ hacks.
• Toxel.com is a blog about advertising, but not that boring “click here” stuff all the others are about. Toxel is a gallery of memorable real-life advertising such as these 24 Clever Advertisements, these 24 Unforgettable Advertisements, or these 14 Creative Advertisements (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).
• Zoomii is an astounding online bookstore that allows you to explore books as if you were in a physical store.

Astronomy

• The Environmental Graffiti blog offers a gallery of the 30 Most Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth.
• NASA has just discovered that Mercury is shrinking. Pluto is having a good laugh over the whole ordeal.

Biology

• Do Worms Do Calculus To Find Meals Or Avoid Unpleasantness?
• Gene Editing Could Make Anyone Immune to AIDS.

Conservation

• Researchers warn that endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought.
• Robert Silverburg of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine speculates on the possible exhaustion of the element Gallium, which a great deal of our technology requires.

Physics

• Biotech Breakthroughs: 15 Developments That Will Eventually Affect YOUR Life
• Movie Physics: Can YOU Bend a Bullet?

Technology

• The Discovery Channel takes a look at the Top 10 Speediest Supercomputers in the World.
• The NewScientist asks, Do we have the technology to build a bionic human? Short answer: No, but we’re coming close.

Movie: “Hancock”

Tagline: “Meet the superhero everybody loves to hate.”
Rating: PG-13
Release: July 2, 2008
Running Time: 1 hr 32 mins
Starring: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, and Eddie Marsan… IMDB listing

Verdict: Hancock is neither the comedy it is marketed as, nor the drama it attempts to be half way through. Rather, it’s a mixed-up disappointed made all the worse for actually containing two surprisingly imaginative concepts that convincing hook audiences before leading them nowhere.

Pirate it or wait for it to hit television so that you don’t feel like a boob for wasting money on tickets.

Comics

• io9 poses the question How Far Is Gotham City From Metropolis?. There is, of course, no good answer. Both cities were short-sightedly written as stand-ins for New York City.

Film

• Against all good sense and every fan who has ever posted to the net, Jeph Loeb defends the possibility of Robin appearing in another Batman film. What the hell?!
• It’s only twenty seconds long, but it’s a must-see! Hellboy on Inside the Actor’s Studio.

Internet

• Atom films has posted its 2008 Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge Finalists. Watching the video is a great way to kill a few hours, and since voting doesn’t end until July 10th, there’s still time to vote.
• Samurai Gunslinger has posted a gallery of The 15 Sexiest Women of Sci-Fi. It’s not very informative, and it’s really not safe for work.

Literature

• Interview: The Book Show of Australia has an interview with Neil Gaiman.
• Split Atom offers an opinion as to 32 Sci-Fi Novels you should read. Many of them are classics. All of them are highly recommended.

Television

• Geeks of Doom speculates on 10 Ways To Make a Kick Ass Version of ‘Space: 1999′ in light of the news of an upcoming revival of the series.

Film

• 30 Upcoming Movie Sequels You Didn’t Know About
• Yet another geeky argument that will never be decided: Indiana Jones vs. Han Solo: Who Would Win?

Internet

• TheOneRing.net is a fan site that is tracking the progress of The Hobbit, which is scheduled for release in 2011.

Literature

• The Eat Our Brains blog shares their Top Ten Zombie Haikus to commemorate the upcoming release of the book Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry For Your…Brains.
• Free Fiction: Helix has posted the intriguingly-titled short story The Mermaids’ Tea Party by Samantha Henderson.
• Free Fiction: If you haven’t gotten around to checking it out yet, Accelerando by Charles Stross has been made available to the public under a Creative Commons license.
• Free Fiction: Subterranean Magazine Online is featuring an audio version of the Locus award-winning story “After the Siege” by Cory Doctorow.
• Free Fiction: Whether or not this is an official release, DivShare has posted The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory.
• Noted historian Robert Darnton gives an inspiring explanation of Why paper books still matter in his article, The Library in the New Age.
• “Why do critics still sneer at sci-fi?” is a damn good question.
• Will there ever be an end to science fiction? Will human science ever advance to the point where we’re only left with things that are impossible to write about?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America

Today is the day the United States celebrates Independence Day, which is commonly referred to in the States simply as “The Fourth.” For those of you not acquainted with the holiday, today is the day we celebrate just how right we were in establishing our own nation by grilling up red meat outdoors over open flames, setting things on fire, and blowing things up.

1054
A supernova is observed by the Chinese and the Arabs. Rock paintings later discovered in North America suggest that Indians in Arizona and New Mexico observed it as well. It remains bright enough to be seen during the day for twenty-three days and at night for almost two years. Scientists will later speculate that the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus is the remnant of this supernova. The incident will remain the brightest supernova in history through the modern day.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Click to Enlarge

Wouldn’t it suck if you got to the future and the reason everything was so super-streamlined was because Apple was in charge? Come to think of it… the Enterprise is very good at generating graphics with its holodecks and receives poor marks for inter-operability with technology outside the Federation.

Are those comm badges chevrons, or a triangle with a bite taken out of them?

Read the rest of this entry » » »

Click to Enlarge

Suggest alternate captions below.