How do you make a Genesis block? What is involved in creating a genesis block? What makes it different from the other blocks in the chain.
There is only one (Bitcoin) chain, and the Genesis Block is the first block in that chain.  

This block was created by Satoshi Nakamoto as the first link in the blockchain. It is hard-coded into the refernce Bitcoin client. To create it, it was "mined" like every other block, except it was at the minimum difficulty level, and contained arbitrary data.

The following quote from The Financial Times is embedded in the block's binary data


  The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks  


This serves to prove it was generated on or after January 3rd 2009, as well as a political statement regarding the global economy.