In English speaking countries, the name Philip Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493 - 1541) isn't often heard these days.

In German-speaking lands, however, the name conjures legends, myths, and tall tales of esoteric secrets, like the real nature of the Philosopher's Stone, or the best recipe for a homunculus.

Were a film about Paracelsus to be made today, however, it would have to be based on this excellent biography. Philip Ball's account of this semi-mythical and little-known figure is a pleasure to read, combining a page-turning narrative with brief histories of Renaissance magic, medicine and religious upheaval.

Decay is the midwife of great things

Social networks evolve over time, driven by the shared activities and affiliations of their members, by similarity of individuals' attributes, and by the closure of short network cycles. We analyzed a dynamic social network comprising 43,553 students, faculty, and staff at a large university, in which interactions between individuals are inferred from time-stamped e-mail headers recorded over one academic year and are matched with affiliations and attributes. We found that network evolution is dominated by a combination of effects arising from network topology itself and the organizational structure in which the network is embedded. In the absence of global perturbations, average network properties appear to approach an equilibrium state, whereas individual properties are unstable.

Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network

Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.

News coverage of this article is here, here, and here.

Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market

If we were to peer backward from, say, 50 years hence at the books available today, we could probably identify dozens or hundreds that had something useful to say had we only listened. From today’s perspective, however, it is difficult to identify those insightful passages, let alone the books that contain them, from among the thousands that address some aspect of the future.

But suppose we tried for something more modest – a list of 50 books covering broad topics that seem likely to be important in thinking about the future human condition. What might that list of 50 books look like?

The following is a first cut at what that list of books might look like.

50 Books for Thinking About the Future Human Condition

I bet this kind of thing happens to you all the time ...

It began six months ago, when Brilliant was playing golf at the Presidio. His cell phone rang, and Chris Anderson, the former publishing magnate who now runs the TED Conference, informed Brilliant that he had been given $100,000 and unlimited plane tickets to come up with an idea for bettering the world.

Also:

Google Inc., which has said it plans to put $1 billion into its charitable efforts, hired as its first chief of philanthropy a man who has helped eliminate smallpox in the Third World, founded a pioneering online community and rubbed elbows with the Grateful Dead.

Dr. Larry Brilliant, 61, of Mill Valley will become executive director of Google.org as it gets started on its mission of "applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems," in the words of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Some Brilliant Guy At Google Will Fix Everything

If I'm superb at shopping, a super-user whose word is law for those who trust me for recommendations, how come I'm not paid to shop?

Bruce Sterling is a futurist, journalist and science-fiction writer. He is living in Belgrade, capital of Serbia and Montenegro, and witnessing markets in transition.

The Futures Of Money

You live in a world of things that create longing and revulsion at the same time. You don't know if you want the things you want because you want them or because somebody has provoked your desire. It's hard to tell anymore if they are bad things — made by people under duress, bad for the environment and your body — or good things that fold neatly back into the biosphere when they're used up.

So here's Bruce Sterling.

Bruce Sterling does not worry about the nefarious uses of radio frequency identification chips

In contrast:

Adi Shamir has applied power analysis techniques to crack passwords for the most popular brand of RFID tags.

"I haven’t tested all RFID tags, but we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected," Shamir said. Using this approach, "a cellphone has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity," he added.

When worlds collide

Darwin didn't gather a thousand and one facts and then invent a theory to explain them -- which was the scientific style that had been urged on the world by the prophet of science Francis Bacon. Instead, the young Darwin made a leap of imagination and then worked for decades to find out if his idea really held up.

From Surmise to Sunrise

At root, we define ourselves with reference to our families and closest kin and work outward from there. But we can learn a great deal more of our own humanity by comparing ourselves with something closely related but still Other. And this, in the final analysis, is the lesson of both books. Tribal allegiance means nothing unless there are other tribes out there against which we can get our measure.

Tricky, Turbulent, Tribal

Masters of Space & Time is now becoming a movie. The hit novel by Rudy Rucker is coming to the big screen. The book according to Amazon is as such : The real world is unbearable to madcap inventor Harry Gerber, so he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe. Master of Space and Time combines high physics and high jinks, blurring the line between science and magic.

From a voyage to a mirror-image world where sluglike parasites make slaves of humanity, to trees and bushes that grow fries and pork chops, to a rain of fish, author Rudy Rucker—two-time winner of the Philip K. Dick Award—takes readers on the ultimate joyride. But once the gluons at the core of Harry's creation run out ... disaster looms for Harry and his friends.

Rudy Rucker Book To Become Major Motion Picture