Fibonacci Numbers are increasingly fashionable. Architects weave them into their buildings, and they figure heavily in books on the rapidly developing science of form in nature.

As we announce the shortlist for the 2011 New Media Writing Prize, Lisa Gee explores the unbound possibilities of digital-era fiction

Cricket is facing a test of credibility – but not because some players cheat. It's also because of the number of nurdlers and sloggers masquerading as Test cricketers. Last summer's series against India was billed as the battle for the world No 1 slot but they sent over a pub team – though admittedly one with a rather good ringer in Sachin Tendulkar. Now South Africa and Australia are contesting the main series of the winter as if it was an Under-9s house match. It's becoming difficult to tellif a player is deliberately underperforming or if he's just rubbish.

Revisionists, novelists, conspiracy theorists...all are banished in the National Gallery's clear-sighted assessment of Da Vinci's boundless talent

One in 20 prospective tenants are now providing landlords with a CV, in the hope of being picked over competitors for rental property, says LudlowThompson, a large London letting agent.

Tales from the Water Cooler: The painter's patron must have felt like Abramovich waiting for Torres to score

Mental illness and money problems very often go together but the link is still unclear.

Billy Crystal has replaced Eddie Murphy as host of the Oscars 2012.

Soldiers are tracing the steps of Scott and Amundsen in aid of the service charity.

There are not more than a score of MPs in the last 40 years who can credibly be considered as ex-future prime ministers. Timothy Raison was undoubtedly among them. I believe – and it is an opinion shared by several Tories in a position to know – that had Willie Whitelaw and not Margaret Thatcher succeeded Ted Heath as Conservative leader, Raison would probably have been his preferred successor. That was not to be. But Raison can claim another achievement: along with his father, Max Raison, he was the founder of two important periodicals – the hugely successful New Scientist, which goes from strength to strength today, and New Society, which was a serious venture, though it met with nothing like the success of New Scientist. Raison was one of Britain's most imaginative public figures of the second half of the 20th century.

There is always a subtext when Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays a recital, but it is seldom as resonant as the one underlying his two linked concerts at the Southbank. It is based on an album called The Liszt Project, in which he juxtaposes piano works by Liszt with 20th-century works reflecting the prophetic nature of his music.

You probably missed it on the news, three weeks ago, the item about the Vietnamese rhinoceros going extinct; it didn't make a lot of noise. The fact that an animal which had roamed the jungles of Vietnam for millions of years had now disappeared from the Earth for ever didn't hit the front pages, or the television headlines: there were far more pressing concerns for the world. A rhino in Vietnam? So what? Who's bothered?

Voices of: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Kevin Eldon

Second Best Moments in Chinese History by Frank Kuppner