(On Italy – Korea)
…And that's the third great thing I've ever seen on live television. It's worth whatever I paid for the new set to have seen it a few diagonal inches larger, a couple generations of screen technology clearer. Maybe you can find a picture of it, put the picture won't suffice. You have to have witnessed the previous two-and-three-quarter hours. You have to hear the crowd. You probably have to have seen the first three Korean games, and maybe all the games. Maybe you have to have followed an underdog team through their entire qualification cycle, twice, and shown up season after season to watch your terrible local pro team lose. I don't know what it would have taken. I know only how I got here. Standing there on the field in Daejon, victorious, Ahn Jung Hwan has no idea where or what he is. The Korean fans, many people have breathlessly said, are the team's twelfth player, a spirit that takes invisible but tangible form and joins them on the field. Maybe that spirit blocked Vieri's shot, and kept Conceicao's out against Portugal, and grabbed Totti's heel and whispered to the linesmen when the Italians might or might not have been offside. I'm less of an animist. I think Conceicao and Vieri missed, and Totti dove, and the Italians are whiners who made a bad strategic decision and don't want to accept the consequences, and the Koreans tried really hard and got lucky. But I don't know, and maybe I'm wrong, and that possibility is the spirit that takes possession of Ahn Jung Hwan for just a moment, and looks out at Daejon through his eyes. It is the single greatest look of awe I've ever seen. Waves of rapture are crashing down on him. How could any single human be the focus of so much joy and relief? For that matter, how can so much emotion come from a mere sporting event, a game in which you have to try to kick a ball with the same feet you're running on? Every night the news shows bomb victims and fires and survivors and killers; there are a dozen things an hour that ought to be more important than a soccer game. So how can time be arrested by this?…

"La magie du bistrot naît d'une clientèle hétéroclite. Si le lieu encourage et conditionne certains comportements, favorise certaines rencontres, il ne faut pas oublier que l'esprit qui accompagne chaque bistrot est un cocktail auquel la présence des clients, du patron et du personnel donne sa saveur particulière. Troubler cette fragile composition, intervenir sur le choix des clients, c'est prendre le risque de falsifier jusqu'à l'image d'un quartier. Corrompre sa représentation, c'est peu à peu la faire disparaître.
Ce mémoire a été l'occasion pour moi de révéler la simplicité d'un quotidien souvent négligé parce qu'évidemment banal. Il m'a permis de m'émerveiller sur des détails, à première vue sans importance mais d'un intérêt crucial en définitif, car appartenant à un ensemble cohérent comme l'est la pièce d'un puzzle. Il est curieux de s'apercevoir que l'atmosphère, la magie d'un lieu, naît de l'association d'une multitude d'éléments."

When Hawking rolled into the auditorium and down the aisle in his motorized wheelchair, everyone rose in applause--a "standing O" just for showing up! The sermon was his customary one on the big bang, black holes, time and the universe, with the theology coming in the question-and-answer period. Here was an opportunity to inquire of a transcendent mind the biggest question of all: "Is there a God?"

Asked this ultimately unanswerable question, Hawking sat rigidly in his chair, stone quiet, his eyes darting back and forth across the computer screen. A minute, maybe two, went by. Finally, a wry smile formed and the Delphic oracle spoke: "I do not answer God questions."

One of the best of these new absurdists is Steve Aylett. His early mysteries were like Hammett on bad acid, in which fast-talking detectives solved metaphysical crimes and sported weapons firing philosophical concepts rather than bullets. The Crime Studio, Bigot Hall and Slaughtermatic were set in the unlikely world of Beerlight. Last year he published the wonderful Shamanspace (Codex Books), in which God was found to exist, causing various parties to seek vengeance against him.
Only an Alligator was the first in a new fantasy trilogy featuring the city of Accomplice, whose map includes the Church of Automata, the Ultimatum Restaurant and the Juice Museum. In this novel Barny Juno, who possesses a useful affinity for large animals, gets up the noses of some serious demons, saving himself with the help of his friends Edgy and Gaffer and an amiable shaman called Beltane Carom. The demons and their chief, Sweeney, are as cheerfully demented as the citizens of Accomplice, whose corrupt and greedy mayor is the only organ of government.

Welcome to what is probably the most elaborate IRC quoting system on the Internet. Please read, laugh, and then add your own brick to the wall of IRC quoting. Just look around, and you'll figure it out.

"Prenons bien garde à ne pas dénaturer les bonheurs infinis de 98 et 2000 au jour de cet échec, même s'il jette une lumière de crépuscule sur cette fabuleuse génération. Remercions celle-ci à la hauteur de ce qu'elle nous a apporté, à l'aune des titres conquis. Aujourd'hui, les images de ce passé si proche, si lointain, se colorent d'une teinte acide, semblent ternies par un épilogue indigne, mais elles retrouveront bientôt leur véritable éclat. Simplement, nous aurons une conscience affinée de leur valeur, notre expérience, trempée dans la déception, étant désormais complète.

Une page se tourne toujours sur une nouvelle. L'équipe de France a encore un titre à défendre, Zidane est toujours le meilleur joueur du monde, Vieira, Henry et Trezeguet sont jeunes et nous avons tant d'espoirs…
Les cahiers du football.

"The upshot is that operating Boing Boing has not only given me a central repository of all of the fruits of my labors in the information fields, but it also has increased the volume and quality of the yield. I know more, find more, and understand better than I ever have, all because of Boing Boing."

- If you could make one journey backwards in time, without the possibility of coming back, where would you go?

- Amsterdam, 1660. The best bread; the best pictures; the most stunning streetscapes in the world; the most musical pubs; the glossiest dogs; the most dazzling women, the most arrogant men; no kings, no wars (for the time being), no bishops; Jews, books, harpsichords galore and... somewhere, Rembrandt van Rijn.

Pullman, attacked by a rightwing columnist as "the most dangerous author in Britain" and "semi-satanic", is celebrated for a trilogy which deliberately takes an opposite line to CS Lewis's Christian tales. In Pullman's world, the universe is ruled by a senile, viciously sadistic deity who has to be deposed in battle so that its inhabitants can join with angels in creating a "republic of heaven".
(.../...)
Asked about his concept of a republic of heaven, Pullman said: "When it was possible to have a belief about God and heaven, it represented something we all desired. It had a profound meaning in human life.

"But when it no longer became possible to believe, a lot of people felt despair. What was the meaning of life? It seems that our nature is so formed that we need a feeling of connectedness with the universe. If there is no longer a king, or a kingdom of heaven, it will have to be a republic in which we are free citizens. We ourselves as citizens have to build the republic of heaven."