geekosystem

Sure, you can go the traditional hearts and flowers route on Valentine's Day, but if you read this site we're willing to bet your interests lie elsewhere. Is there a cute girl in your particle physics lab, or perhaps a handsome Dungeon Master in your life? Maybe you just want to tell your mom how special she is. Regardless, here are some geeky valentines to tell someone you love them, and if you're lucky they'll say, "I know," then get frozen in carbonite and taken away by Boba Fett.

There's two ways you can get your hands on a movie-accurate replica of the nefarious artificial intelligence HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The first -- provided you have no qualms with the destruction of property and your own reputation -- is smashing open the display case of cinematic tchotchkes at Planet Hollywood. The second, and comparatively least felonious, option is shelling out an honest buck for a HAL 9000 of your own. Currently on sale at ThinkGeek, every adult geek's one stop shop for frivolous spending, this reproduction of everyone's favorite wall-mounted A.I. unit comes programmed with 15 chillingly calm phrases and other goodies sure to make innocuous trips across the living room into a paranoid experience!

Douglas Trumbull, one of the special effects supervisors on 2001: A Space Odyssey, is no longer making his making-of documentary on the seminal science fiction film, since Warner Bros. pulled the plug on his funding. But while in Toronto showing off stills from the photo-book that 2001: Behind the Infinite—The Making of a Masterpiece is being converted into, he happened to mention an interesting discovery made in the production of his now defunct movie.

 

How well do the Double Rainbow guy and 2001: A Space Odyssey go together? Surprisingly well, that's how well. What vaults Double Rainbow above the lowly sphere of memes, through the mainstream, and into transcendence is that in addition to being a humorous Internet phenomenon, it speaks to us. We could see someone who knows nothing about the origins of Double Rainbow slipping the video below into a yoga class lineup, and it being everyone's favorite yoga class that year.

On the 30th anniversary of the 1980 musical comedy movie The Blues Brothers, The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano advised Catholics worldwide to watch the film. Developed from the two Saturday Night Live sketch characters played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the Blues Brothers embark on "a mission from God" in the movie, to save the Catholic orphanage where they grew up from foreclosure. So retroactively topical! So it got us thinking, what other cool or geeky things have the Vatican been known to admit to liking? Hit the jump and find out.