• The ‘end of history’ illusion and why we can’t imagine getting old
• “The finite is nested within the infinite” (or my favourite parable: somewhere in infinity, an alternate universe exists where you are the Batman)
• Of last year’s bestselling sci-fi list, only one was published that year
• Does a techno utopia require physical books?
• Reshaping the brain: scientists reprogram neurons after birth
• The mysterious disappearance of the Russian Crown Jewels
• The courtroom sketches of Bill Robles
• Inside the prison journal of West Memphis Three’s Damien Echols
• Papers reveal extent of the British royals’ veto over bills
• The Guardian’s stats on the size of their commenting community
• The science of why comment trolls suck
• An interesting design proposal: I want the world to scroll this way
• Good god, someone’s patent application disturbingly mirrors the artificial second stomach sketch from Tim and Eric
• Parkinson’s treatment can trigger creativity
• Password security in Deus Ex
• What Games Are: the fun boson does not exist
• To look into: a best comedy books of 2012 list

Lastly, a super-cut of famous people playing themselves

• Ars Technica’s craziest Craigslist posts of 2012
• Buzzfeed’s 27 science fictions that became science facts in 2012
• io9’s Most futuristic predictions that came true in 2012
• NYP asks designers for their favorite book cover designs of 2012
• Computer Weekly editor on digital publishing, growing revenue and life after print
• SMBC on Economics and the study of scarce resources
• The strange case of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, as old by Grant Morrison
• A martian dream: What the Red Planet would look like with Earth-like oceans and life
• Profile on Jerry Seinfeld: intends to die standing up
• I now want to play Singularity Chess
• Scientific paper on The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth
• What does randomness look like?
• This guy’s assessment of the multiple visual qualities of The Hobbit‘s format is pretty damn good
• And this one at least illuminates some of the science how human perceive high frame rates
• Right on: Love Actually is rubbish
• Website: Essay Typer
• Website: Wi-fi joiner QR Code Generator

40,000 LEDs and a perfect tree

• 10 favourite tweets the Modern Seinfeld account (Comedy gold Jerry! Gold!)
• Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields
• The hum that helps to fight crime
• Finally! A project to curb down ocean noise pollution.
• Shake It, Baby: GOG.com giving Duke 3D away for free
• Oh wow, only now is it the end of 386 processors
• Why are dead people ‘liking’ stuff On Facebook?
• Raymond Briggs: The Snowman is not really about Christmas, it’s about death 
• Paul McCartney to replace Kurt Cobain in Nirvana reunion
• Website: every animated wikipedia gif
• Video: A student who has fallen asleep in a physics lecture

• Rolling Stone has a Q&A with David Cross on ‘Arrested Development’
• This elaborates on the politics of The Dark Knight movies
• This’ll make you feel old: For incoming college freshmen, Kurt Cobain has always been dead
• And this, nostalgically older: The need to upgrade computers is coming to a halt
• On business/hiring: The Bozo Event Horizon
• The Googler whose job was to Browse the worst of the internet
• How one NASA scientist’s family Switched over to Martian Time
• Photos from August 22, 1969: The Beatles’ final photo shoot
• And a time capsule was opened and the 25 year-old predictions by some sci-fi writers about ‘what life would be like in 2012’ are read. Some points are fairly on-the-mark, but a few are also depressingly way off.

This graduate short film by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo depicts a future enhanced with bio-augmented reality and a sinister consequence of that technology.

The tributes are rapidly coming in today on the spreading news of Ray Bradbury’s passing.

Neil Gaiman’s blog post and Guardian write up are particularly great; along with Time’s articles here and here; and this video tribute from NASA on his visit to the Mars Rovers in 2009 is quite special.

But probably the best one is this excerpt from a symposium in 1971 where, with the likes of Carl Sagan and Arthur C Clarke, he reads his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been”.

Recently, I’ve linked several articles with topics on both the decline and growth of science fiction writing, but admittedly at the same time, it’s been many years since I’ve read any science-fiction and even more since I last read any Bradbury. Even though he came to dislike the internet, I’d like to think that with so much love and tributes from around the world being shared today, it will help point generations of readers, both new and old to pick up a copy of something like the Martian Chronicles and be inspired again. I know I will.

• What it’s like to have Nazi grandparents
• How the coming wave of ultra-cheaping computing devices will change everyone’s lives
• The world is slowly getting better (LGBT)
• Does globalization mean we will become one culture?
• How Religion’s Demand for Obedience Keeps Us in the Dark Ages
• The Next Generation: New Writers of Scientific Imagination

• Carl Sagan on Mastering the Vital Balance of Skepticism & Openness
  

  Seven years ago this week, David Foster Wallace argued that “learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.” Yet in an age of ceaseless sensationalism, pseudoscience, and a relentless race for shortcuts, quick answers, and silver bullets, knowing what to think seems increasingly challenging.

• ‘Are SF writers “slacking off” or is science fiction still the genre of “big ideas”?’
  

  Calls for more big ideas in SF are generally a political cri de coeur. We might equally imagine a similar essay in the context of mid-sixties Soviet fiction, calling for more fiction about tractors and breakthroughs in agricultural genomics.

• How Facebook Threatens the Legitimacy of the Stock Market
• The Perfection of the Paper Clip
• Could Angry Birds lead to mass murder?
• 2012 TV Body Count Study Results