geekosystem

It's been nearly three years since we last loved, hated, and argued with our moms about Lost, but all that time still hasn't let the various plots and implications of the story sink in. Thanks to Santiago Ortiz, we have this interactive guide, complete with detailed map and index, of everything we could possibly want to know about Lost, and how it all relates to each other.

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, J.J. Abrams doesn't make TV shows. He makes video games instead. There are definitely some things that our doplegangers are missing out on... (Zach Snyder tries to reboot Star Trek. Yikes.) It's not all bad, though: In the world where J.J. Abrams makes video games, then Lost obviously replaces The Secret of Monkey Island as the pinnacle of point-and-click adventure games.

The history of beer is almost as old as human history, and it would be quite true to say that our love affair with the stuff has only grown with modern brewing practices. Given beer's pervasive place in human history, it's not surprising that the geeky pastimes of drinkers would eventually rub off on the beers themselves. The result is a veritable cornucopia of nerdy beers, from Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and a few others that fit in quite nicely with your nerdy lifestyle. Like Pizza Beer -- it's more efficient than eating both separately! So sit back, crack open a cold one, and enjoy this astounding and some times mouthwatering collection.

Static objects are fairly good at being ominous: A humanoid figure too far off in the distance to have any discernible features, or a lone gun sitting on a dresser. They're ominous because of the details the imagination fills in. Why is that humanoid just standing around all the way over there? Why do you have that gun sitting on the dresser in plain sight? For the details the imagination fills in, a door provides the biggest lack thereof, and thus provides a stomping ground for the most twisted, evil machinations your imagination can conjure. On top of that, they could be the portal to something even more terrifying and sinister than you could've thought, and after the break, we whipped up a list of the ten most terrifying doors in geekdom that are better left closed.

Artist JJ Harrison loves Lost and he loves Star Wars. If you're uncertain of that, just take a look at the "about" page on his website where he is clearly wearing a Storm Trooper uniform with a Dharma logo. Anyway, this dual-chambered love affair eventually came to its logical conclusion when Harrison made three paintings inspired by the original Star Wars posters featuring the cast of Lost. It's a truly wonderful sight to behold. Read on after the break to see the posters full size.

Just because LOST is over doesn't mean I need to accept it. Not when there are things like this incredibly detailed playset of the legendary Swan station (aka. The Hatch) complete with about a dozen custom action figures and two vehicles. The playset itself has everything you need to recreate most of season two, including the lock down map, some cool lighting effects, what appears to be some kind of sound system, and Dharma Initiative Composite Ranch Dressing!

No idea how accurate this account is, but it's too cool not to relate: According to a Computerworld article, 214-748-3647 is the most commonly recorded phone number. How is this possible, considering that most phone numbers are supposed to, well, correspond to just one phone? Per the article:

Why? Because some programmer somewhere didn't learn his lesson from Y2K, and decided to store phone numbers as a single integer instead of a string of characters, but only used 32 bits and didn't check for overflow. So any time someone enters a phone number that's larger than 2147483647, the system stores it as that Dallas number. Somewhere in Dallas, some poor bastard is wondering why his phone rings off the hook with calls for the Nevada Division of Mental Health & Developmental Services, the Jackson County Florida Chamber of Commerce, a yacht club in New York.....

'Course, there are a lot of area codes that correspond to bigger numbers than 214, so that would be quite a few overflows if this story is legit. (Computerworld via J-Walk Blog)

The big story of the day is that two tickets matched all six numbers in last night's Mega Millions drawing, making the owners of both tickets eligible to split a $355 million jackpot. But LOST fans may rejoice in the fact that if you played Hurley's numbers -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 -- in the Mega Millions sweepstakes, you're in for a small prize as well, as are thousands of other people, many of whom we're betting are LOST fans. The winning numbers for the lottery were 4, 8, 15, 25, 47, and Mega Ball 42, eerily similar to the LOST numbers already; more than 25,000 people who correctly picked three of the regular numbers plus the Mega Ball number (for LOSTies, 4, 8, 15, and 42), are eligible for a $150 prize. It's not Hurley's $114 million Mega Lotto jackpot, but it also hopefully doesn't come with all the weird unlucky paranormal stuff. (Damon Lindelof via io9; NPR)

While the actual number of downloads has dropped, both LOST and Heroes topped the list of TV's most downloaded shows, proving that geeks watch the most popular sci-fi shows on TV, just not on the actual TV machine. Heroes had actually topped the list in 2009, but the media surrounding LOST's final season most likely drew more viewers than Heroes' cancellation. According to TorrentFreak, "the most downloaded episode of Heroes is still exceeding the average viewership on US television." Dexter, which moved up to third on the list, also experienced more downloads than TV viewers.

As any LOST fan is aware (hey, remember LOST?), the show is replete with philosophical references. But even though the philosophical references often have nothing to do with anything when you think about it, has the phenomenon that is LOST eclipsed the original philosophers in question? Self-described "wack-ademic and a designerd" Raynor Ganan conducted an informal little test: He did Google Image searches for "John Locke" and "Jeremy Bentham," both names assigned to Terry O'Quinn's bald-headed fella at various points in the series, and graphed the number of faces he saw for each result out of the first 100 faces displayed.

As you can see from the above charts, LOST's John Locke beat out real John Locke, 57% to 34%; real Jeremy Bentham beat LOST Jeremy Bentham 69% to 27%. I'm a little surprised even by that, though. The "Jeremy Bentham" bit on LOST was, IMO, a kind of unnecessary plot twist-setup that occurred in the middle of the series and was subsequently dropped, and wasn't really the identifier with which we primarily associated O'Quinn's character; still, that was good enough for 27 Google results.

When else has pop culture hijacked high culture?

(The Ragbag via Urlesque Tumblr)

The most-beloved TV shows on the Internet comprise a very different list from the most popular shows on television. And that's probably a good thing: Mad Men, The Wire, and Arrested Development all break the top five, despite less-than-stellar ratings. But where are Firefly and Freaks and Geeks? List below:

Weezer's geek cred may have taken a hit when it was revealed that their new album, titled Hurley and featuring a big ol' cover of LOST fan favorite Hurley, a.k.a. Jorge Garcia, may have been a marketing ploy to promote clothing company Hurley rather than a genuine celebration of the Lostiverse. They at least bought back a little bit of that cred last night, when Garcia made a surprise entrance at Weezer's Hollywood show to sing "Lost Situation," a track from their 2005 album Make Believe. He's pretty good! Bonus synchronicity: This happened on the eve of the six-year anniversary of Oceanic Flight 815's historic flight from Sydney to L.A. (via Look at this Frakking Geekster)

If sleeplessly pushing a button every 108 minutes just doesn't seem obsessive enough to you, you just may want to head the way of London's Prince Charles Cinema: Beginning September 13th, the movie theater plans to screen all 121 episodes of LOST back-to-back, for a total of 80 hours of onscreen delirium, spanning four days.

Winston Rowntree has created an infographic illustrating the arc of watchability that is followed by most long running television dramas, and it simply contains too much truth not to post. From The Grace Period, to the three season long Plateau, through to the Zombie Years; fans of Lost and The X-Files should particularly relate.

No, actually, this is it: Weezer's upcoming album Hurley opted for the obvious -- and also ridiculous -- choice cover. After the Green Album and Red Album, this is clearly the natural progression. The record, due in stores September 14 on Epitaph, will employ the above image of Lost actor Jorge Garcia, who is grinning to have succeeded Jacob as the New Man in Charge.