Mitch Hurwitz in the writers room of the new Arrested Development via Ron Howard’s twitter

• Researchers Name Language After Colbert
• Carl Sagan’s Reading List
• Hubble Unmasks Dark Matter Rich Galaxies
• A crystal computer that could outlive the universe
• Flowchart: Do you understand the Higgs Boson?
• When Old, Slow and Boring Beats New, Fast and Exciting
• Why We Love Violence in Fiction
• 11 Wonderful Libraries in Africa
• 6 Disorders Caused by the Internet, TV, Magazines and Movies
• Tumblr goodness: Facemath

• Vast Video Game Collection Sells for $1.2M
• A Hot Drink on a Hot Day Can Cool You Down
• Why Were CD Boxes So Big in the Early 1990s?
• Is the Web Driving Us Mad?
• Walker Arts Center Validates the First-Ever Internet Cat Video Film Festival
• Discovery of an arsenic-friendly microbe refuted
• Scientists just discovered what makes migration possible
• Tire reefs fail to revive marine life in Florida
• Share it Maybe with Cookie Monster “Call Me Maybe” Parody (yes, I know, I too feel awful)
• The 20 Awesomest Photos of Women & Bacon
• 17 Famous Literary Characters Almost Named Something Else
• 12 Fascinating True Stories About Guest Stars On ‘The Simpsons’

And lastly, a short commercial by Jon Lajoie. If you were completely honest with yourself, you’d realize that you are a terrible person.

• What Do The Authors Of Serialized Works Owe To Their Fans?
• Thank you for killing my novel
• Girl Accidentally Emails Prospective Employer Pic Of Nic Cage instead of CV
• Batman could fly, but he’d die horribly on landing, science students conclude
• The Mountain Goats announce new album: Transcendental Youth
• The Black Punk, the Black Geek, and Other Black People You Don’t Meet on TV
• Every Single Media Outlet Is Misreporting Obama’s Tax Proposal
• Supreme Court flip-flops: Health care wasn’t the first. It won’t be the last.
• Google Decides To Step Into The Gay Rights Arena
• The 20 Most Beautiful Museums in the World
• Video: 16-bit Game of Thrones, Season 2
• Video: this self taught 6 year old drummer is really good and depresses me
• Infographic: The best and worst places in the world to be a woman
• Comic: Learn Korean in 15 minutes

And then there’s this awesome report on some late-night BBQ chips bandits.

LEGO life-size forest in the Australian outback

• Don’t wipe out the masterpiece! A teacher who makes 25-minute whiteboard artworks in his lunch break
• The Master Race’s Graphic Design Manual
• Here’s What An Animated Font Looks Like
• The Not-So-Perfect Kilogram and Why the Metric System Might Be Screwed
• Dark Matter Filament Found, Says Scientists
• Women Infected with Toxoplasma Gondii Parasite Have Increased Risk of Attempting Suicide
• GQ writer interviews six people on different levels of income
• San Diego Accidentally Set Off All Its Fourth Of July Fireworks at Once
• Pearl Jam Allows Longtime Fan To Create Setlist For Amsterdam Show
• Forget rap disses, here’s The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History

Lastly, this: Super Moonwalking.

Rare blue ‘night-shining clouds’ pictured at dusk over Edinburgh

• Seinfeld’s Producer: Listen to Your Gut, Then Fight For What it’s Telling You
• When His Project Was Canceled, an Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
• Higgs week starts with Fermilab updates, strong evidence expected
• Scientists Invent Particles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing
• How Do Glowsticks Glow?
• How To Decide Baking Temperature When a Recipe Doesn’t Mention It
• Why you were just ‘unfriended’ on Facebook
• Anderson Cooper: “The Fact Is, I’m Gay and the internet’s reaction
• With Google Now, Android Puts Apple’s Siri To Shame
• The Oatmeal fights back, snaps photo of cash, sends money to charity
• If Harry Potter was written like a Madeline book
• Bin Laden realized the truth: Terrorism doesn’t work
• Video/Article: On board a real-life ‘ghost train’

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.

Back in 1993, Douglas Adams recorded this soundbite for his then-publisher, retracing the origins of books and an almost prophetic description of their evolution to e-books.

Below is a submitted animation for a competition run by the Literary Platform to design a motion graphic to accompany this soundbite. Check it.

This. This is just fucking awesome.

Comissioned by Good Books, this is one helluva slick piece of animation and music. There’s a voice over version here, but the almost caricature Depp is kind of distracting and as you’ll see in this version below, just the music and visuals are more than enough.

Fuck yeah.

UPDATE: The sound and music only version appears to have been replaced by the original voice over one. Have included a youtube version in the meantime.

Colourised Photos

Bookshelf Porn

Philippe Ramette