"I don't believe the header is cramped, but it's not in comparison with the footer, the footer feels heavy to me."

Kroc and I were talking about the header of the article specifically, but the header may not seem as cramped now because I made some changes a little while ago. I do agree with you about the footer. Something feels off about it. I think I could do better, don't have an idea yet though.

"It would be just about perfect if only the previous/next article arrows would give some visual feedback (or cease being links) when there is no previous/next article"

Yeah, but they look pretty! :(

The empty links are technically semantic html5. A link without a @href specifies a location where a link may have otherwise been placed.

I might remove them or add some functionality to them. They show up because they're leftover markup from my old design. My older design literally didn't work if those links didn't exist - So I admit, I added useless markup just for the sake of design. I am embarrassed, hehe.

Thank you guys. :)