This Week in Geekdom

Hi everyone! Belated wishes for a wonderful long weekend to all those who celebrated the 4th of July. Hopefully Hurricane Arthur didn't rain out all three days for you. While the GIR and I were able to enjoy some BBQ, board games, and the haul from the Steam Summer Sale (Long Live the Queen, you are so addictive), we're also in the process of beginning final preparations for Gen Con 2014. Squee! More on the latter in upcoming posts though; for now, let's get down to the Week in Geekdom!

Comics

One of the single most-hyped events scheduled to hit the world of comics this year is the upcoming Death of Wolverine series. As part of the run-up to the release, Marvel will be deploying these 'memorial kits' to build interest (since the concept of Wolverine dying wasn't attention-grabbing enough?). The kits will be available at your friendly local comic book retailer.

One of the many variant covers

The Supreme Court of the United States has been at the forefront of many media outlets this past week, but fans of Superman may already be looking forward to the next round of SCOTUS decisions. The heirs of Superman creator Joe Shuster have requested that SCOTUS overturn a 1992 ruling that saw said heirs waive their rights to the Man of Steel.  

If this image turns out to be legit, it may be one of the most appropriate uses of a selfie ever.

Games

We've talked a bit about the unfortunate course that Nintendo is currently mired in. Here is how the company intends on righting the Wii U ship.

The World Cup may be only four games from completion, but FIFA still has a monopoly on football as it's played in your living room. This is a solid breakdown of why the FIFA games remain so incredibly beloved and will give you a Cup caliber football fix long after next Sunday.

TV

Whovians, here is a brand new trailer to help tide you over until the premiere of the eighth series of Doctor Who. 

Though Gillian Anderson takes pride in the nine years she spent portraying Special Agent Dana Scully, she can't look back on her iconic work without cringing at the costumes.

Movies

On Thursday we got a new glimpse of the forthcoming Batman vs Superman movie. Bonus: the movie now has a title (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice).

Science/Technology

The collective attentions of would-be spacefarers has long been focused on the still-theoretical missions to send humans to Mars, but a collective of science fiction writers have put together this argument that we should perhaps consider visiting Venus instead.

Whether we end up going to Mars or Venus, it's clear we'll need quite a bit in the way of gravity-defying thrust to get that journey off the ground (sorry, terrible puns are terrible). On Wednesday, NASA finalized their plans to make such powerful hardware a reality.

Speaking of travelers in our solar system, Happy Birthday to the Cassini spacecraft. In celebration of Cassini's decade of service in orbit around Saturn, here are some of the most stunning, beautiful images that have been beamed back to Earth.

Super impressive work Cassini.

MIT brings us one step closer to Skynet with their new algorithm, AMPS. This breakthrough, which will be presented at the Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence later this month, allows teams of autonomous robots to learn from one another.

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Joint Institute for Lab Astrophysics believes that they have discovered an entirely new state of matter. Guys, meet excitons.

We may now have a better handle on the fundamental states and nature of matter, but, if quantum mechanics is actually universally applicable, that knowledge may be an illusion.

While we're on the subject of entirely novel states of being, check out this new theory of star formation that posits that one in every 10,000 stars must be made entirely of heavy metal. Bonus: the theory is predicated on a suitably 'metal' climatic phenomenon.

IBM's Watson is a formidable opponent on Jeopardy, but the cognitive computer has a surprising creative side. Meet Chef Watson, the foodie computer.

To commemorate Friday's holiday, here is a brief rundown of the awesome physics behind a basic sparkler.

General Awesomeness

File this one under Excellent Idea, Difficult in Practice: a shirt you can play Tetris on.

Are you a fan of the Abyss with some space in your living room and an extra 5,800 GBP lying around? Then this may be the coffee table for you.

Photographer Cambridge Jones, in concert with the Story Museum of Oxford, put together this pictorial series of authors dressed up as their favorite characters. Bonus: Neil Gaiman as a badger.

I leave you with fireworks of a very nerdy variety: the 10 greatest space battles in visual media. As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!