The Globe’s Ivor Tossell ‘murders’ Tim Russert and writes on the thrill of being the first one to edit a Wikipedia page – in this case, being the first to update the Meet the Press page with the news of Russert’s death. Best part: “[Wikipedia] is not so much an encyclopedia as a registry of – and I use this word with some trepidation – reality. It’s an ever-changing ledger book of where things stand in our universe.”

Recent academic conference on the strange fasciantion we have with train-wreck female celebrities. I haven’t yet found any of the papers online, but it seems that the most interesting question would be the inseparability of desire and revulsion, approval and condemnation, particularly if we consider the media circus surrounding Spears, Winehouse et al a covert return of misogyny and conservative sexuality.

Why I Still Use Windows, by Gizmodo’s Adam Frucci. I almost never agree with Frucci, but from the cult of personality that surrounds Jobs, to commodity fetishism to sheer stubbornness, I could have written this.

A robotic snake that is creepy and a bit terrifying. (I’m really scared of robots taking over aren’t I?)

Arthur C. Clarke’s story “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Fuck aliens, supercomputers and other juvenilia- this is what science fiction should do. [via] {Update: As Matthew so rightly points out in the comments: a) this story has a supercomputer in it; b) there is nothing inherently juvenile about aliens or other sci-fi tropes. I was just shooting my mouth off for no good reason at all.}

And finally, Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx. I’ll be honest, I didn’t watch it all but it seems they’re taking pains to emphasise the the Hegelian roots of Marx rather than the Marx’s radical move away from Hegel’s focus on mind and spirit.