Dyson: In some creation myths, life arises out of the earth; in others, life falls out of the sky. The creation myth of the digital universe entails both metaphors. The hardware came out of the mud of World War II, and the code fell out of abstract mathematical concepts. Computation needs both physical stuff and a logical soul to bring it to life. These were young kids who had just come through World War II, who could repair the electronics on airplanes and get them flying the same day, and von Neumann put them together with mathematical logicians who could imagine a universe created entirely out of 0s and 1s.

"With Whitehouse, the way you get around the 'noise issue', if we can call it that, is through the use of language. There I'd apply the same principles linguistically, where you're overloading the brain with very complex linguistic structures very fast - too fast for the brain to cope with. ... I remember there was one concert in Vienna, and there was this barrage of abuse and loud abrasive noise, for an entire hour, but at the end it was extraordinary - the entire audience had these huge, silly grins on their faces, and their hands were in the air like some sort of exaltation."

"HAVANA TIMES, June 24 (IPS) - Recognized for her work in defense of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, Mariela Castro Espín advocates a form of socialism that is more just, dialectical, inclusive, and especially, participative. ... 'For me, participatory socialist democracy is fundamental, not only at a level of political statements or at the theoretical level, but in the creation of those mechanisms in day to day life.'"

"Today is Doncaster’s brand-spanking-new [English Democrat party] Mayor’s first day on the job, and his first engagement of the day was an interview with BBC Radio Sheffield’s Toby Foster. I hope Mayor Davies didn’t think he was in for an easy ride for his first official interview, because that’s not what he got."

"2.0 like I said, we’ve definitely pushed it out for awhile because were going to hang back and let 1.0 get the adoption. You’ll probably see things finalized with MKS/MKV/MKA so there’s support within the web browser itself by default. Within all web browsers, Safari and the like."

"To all intents and purposes, North Korea is no longer a perfect Stalinist economy. It is more like a country in central Africa, but with a bad and cold climate. ... Sometimes it feels like you are back at the time when China was still ruled by the great Tang dynasty, or maybe by the Song dynasty, and you would not be surprised to see horsemen in the armour of the Genghis Khan era appearing from behind a hill. You don’t see any signs of modern technology, no phone masts, no pylons, no railways, no paved roads, nothing."

"A month ago on the eve of ROFLcon, I interviewed the founder of 4chan for a magazine story that never ended up running. ... 4chan is actually one of the most robust, complex, annoying, disgusting, illuminating, perverse, fascinating online communities ever created. It is the direct or indirect source for many of the strangest internet memes: RickRolling, LOLcats, Sarah Palin's email hack, Anonymous, Chocolate Rain, and many other minor and major feats of esoterica (i.e., fucked up weird porn)."

"Anyhow, people should realise I stopped making EBM since 1994 when "Deep Red" was released. "Welcome To Earth" was not an EBM album at all, even though it was build on the EBM building blocks."

"'It should be of no pride to American society to say they defend something like this,' President Ahmadinejad said."

B3ta.com interviews Wes Cherry, the creator of Solitaire for Windows.

"So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point

"When the Vietnam war was at the level of the Iraq war today there was almost no opposition. Public protest of the Iraq war is far beyond that of the Vietnam war at any comparable stage. People have just forgotten."

"After the HD-DVD crack, I realized that things where "unbalanced" by having just one format cracked, so I did Blu-Ray too."

"In our hour-long talk, we talked about the state of PC gaming, QuakeCon and the pros and cons of developing for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360."

"So what’s the real story behind the mysterious duo Âme? RA talked to Kristian Beyer and found out."

Interview with Snowwy.

"HOFF! HOFF! HOFF! HOFF!"

Tips and thoughts on noting hobbies, etc, on ones CV from lifehacker.com commentors.

The history of the FedEx logo.