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.

"That's right, Doctor," nodded Ersheim, and then, as if to confirm that fact, he began counting, moving his head from side to side: "one, two, three, bleem, four . . ."

"The advice we give others is the advice that we ourselves need. Since it is too late for me to learn these lessons, I will discharge my unfulfilled duty by dishing them out to you. They will be stated in order of increasing controversiality."

"That way you'll have a truly roflscale Fibonacci web service."

"I had several small plastic Ponies that I used to play make-believe with my friends. But I had one larger, plush My Little Pony, a bright-green stuffed horse with a vivid pink mane and tail that I played with all by myself. I would sit for hours on my own, braiding and rebraiding its tail. I developed a system for braiding the tail of my Pony that taught me about mathematical concepts-- from division to recursion."

Dope graph.

tunyurl.com/dopegraph

"If you haven’t heard about it yet, the new computational search engine Wolfram Alpha launched this week to much fanfare and attention. The service can calculate integrals, tell you the flying time between San Francisco and London, or even the (lack of) nutritional content of your M&M’s. But Stephen Wolfram and his team didn’t stop there, and they certainly didn’t lack a sense of humor when they built their Mathematica-based engine. Slowly but surely, people have been finding some interesting quirks within Wolfram Alpha, triggered by specific questions or events. These interesting easter eggs will make you smile or raise an eyebrow in bewilderment."

"We used to tease and say "1-2-many" is how baboons count. So, imagine my puzzlement when I saw that there are... well... humans living by a similar system! Here we are wielding the Power of the Universe (maths) as if it is nothing... and others are still

My favourite webcomic.

"In recent years, mathematicians such as Osinga have started knitting and crocheting concrete physical models of hard-to-visualize mathematical objects."

"Where art meets science."

Nice.