Every so often, an unexpected pop-cultural youthquake spawns its power clique, and that's what's happening in California this endless summer of silicon love. As the YouTube buyout in October signified, Silicon Valley is on fire again. Giddy venture capitalists have already broken a five-year record by pumping $13.4 billion into startups. Ron Conway, the legendary investor known as the Godfather of Silicon Valley, describes the party mood as "borderline euphoria." And the scrappy prodigies at this bar are the main reason. "Through these entrepreneurs," says Conway, "you can see the future."

They're — they're like kaleidoscopes! Kaleidoscopes made of money!

The Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley [Rolling Stone]

In this piece about Silicon Valley's Guynn pulls telling quotes from high-level sources. A former SEC chairman, for example, tells her, "People are spending more time with lawyers than they would like to." She adds her own quips, like "White-collar investigations just don't go over well in a place where so few people wear collars." But the soul of this article is in its metaphors. Guynn compares the Valley to hamsters running in NASCAR, a foreigner getting a green card, and an overloaded buffet plate. One source tells her:

Silicon Valley had an incredible honeymoon. It enjoyed virginal capitalism and a period of exemption unlike any industry I have ever seen. But most industries have to face allegations of rapaciousness at one point or another.

Silicon Valley loses its sheen [SF Chronicle]

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it.

Check out his ultimate blog posts, including this one for MacRumors: "Apple is going to sue us for revealing that Apple is going to sue us."

The Ultimate Blog Post [Wired News]

Nearby, a stooped woman wearing a smock swirled in purple and red, who insisted on being called only "Grandmother," bundled her silicon pebbles and headed to a silicon bazaar. There, among vegetable sellers and old men who shuffled along selling tin foil, Chinese middlemen perched over rusty metal scales were doling out money for silicon.

"When this mine is finished I hope we can find another one," she said. "Nobody cares about this region. We can all starve to death and nobody will notice our bodies."

There's Money in Dirt, for Those Who Find Bits of Silicon [NYT]

That's why Valleywag presents its first Spider Jerusalem Award for Best Blurb in Technology Journalism to the Wall Street Journal's Jason Fry. He sums up the frustration of so many former tech news fans when he introduces a story about private space travel by lamenting the fall of the brave space-scientist archetype:

C'mon, kid: Your square-jawed rocket engineers of future histories past are now tattooed, pierced software engineers coding social-networking sites.

Second Thoughts on Outer Space [WSJ]