Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Kim Stanley Robinson and other greats in science fiction hitched a ride to Mars today-in a digital form, at least.

SPACE.com -- Space Library Heads Towards Mars

For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning -- not the end -- of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty.

The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired.

This onerous burden of proof discourages many from filing formal complaints.

Amy R. Gershkoff - Saving Soldiers' Jobs - washingtonpost.com

Someone's gotta do it. No one's gonna do it. So I'll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts.

how scary i agree with Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer - Lit Up For Liftoff? - washingtonpost.com

vaguely disturbed to see someone Adam uppercase "a" blogging with my name
not a big deal but i came on the site and i'm like i didn't recommend that article and it took me a second to realize ah uppercase
so time for a name change
online cognomen time

Taste in music has become far more diverse because of the internet, which is revolutionizing the way consumers buy songs, according to research published on Monday.

thus "nuts" to the prophets of doom
more diversity
more interplay of memes
a melting pot will produce new synergies -- new art

Financial Times - Onet.pl Waluty

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old.

He was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.

In a press interview for her film "Away From Her", director Sarah Polley laments:

"It's sad to think there was a time when people lined up around the block to see Bergman movies ... and how unimaginable that is now."

How about a theatrical re-release of "Wild Strawberries" and "The Seventh Seal"?
a great loss

Film Director Ingmar Bergman Dies

After a hearing lasting more than 40 days, Pakistan's Supreme Court on July 20th overturned the government's suspension of the court's chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

The court's ruling means that Mr Chaudhry is to be reinstated.

The decision is a major blow to General Pervez Musharraf, the president, and a tactical victory for the secular political parties, who have rallied behind the judiciary in protest at what they regard as an attempt to undermine judicial independence.

The ruling is also momentous because the Pakistani judiciary in the past has always been reluctant to rule against the military or a military-led government.

However, while the decision removes one source of political tension, it will do little to stop the terrorist violence now engulfing the country.

Justice wins

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are both serious foreign policy thinkers. So that makes it all the more bizarre that in one important area of foreign policy they both would drag this country backward.

That’s trade, particularly the effort to bash China as a scapegoat for our economic problems.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill — the latest resurrection of anti-China legislation — that could target China for punitive duties unless it revalues its currency. The China-U.S. relationship is the most important relationship in the world, and this bill would risk trade battles that would disrupt it for many years to come.
...
There’ll be a tendency among liberals to excuse Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama for pandering on trade, because they are sensible on so many other issues.

guilty i do want to excuse them but i believe in the importance of global free trade
wierd on this one i have to go with Bush

The New Democratic Scapegoat - New York Times

Hameeda Sarfraz, 19, lively eyes sparkling out of a black burka, was describing the boons of the afterlife.

"In heaven you get everything without hardship," said Sarfraz, daughter of a bus driver. "In heaven, if a martyr feels hungry, food appears, the best quality food, and you won't even know where it came from."

Sarfraz, an alumna of the now bullet-ridden Jamia Hafsa Islamic school for girls, said she deeply regretted missing her chance to be a martyr. She fled through the back door of the school July 3, just hours after a gun battle began between Pakistani special forces and militants holed up in the neighboring Red Mosque, the parent institution of Jamia Hafsa.
...
She and others returned with a mission to reform their families and their communities, cajoling their mothers and sisters to hide themselves in head-to-toe black burkas. They say they have lost interest in the pleasures of this life though some, like Akhtar, have yet to give up on pleasures like painting their toenails a dark blood-red. They express an obsession with the afterlife.

They say they would like to see a thousand Jamia Hafsa seminaries bloom across the nation. Sarfraz has already begun classes at home for the children in her village.

so not so much lancing a boil but inducing a sneeze which spreads the memes
i'm reminded of a puffball mushroom of which wikipedia says

When ripe, the rind tears at the apex and the spores escape through the aperture when any pressure is applied to the ball.

Pakistani students display a radical Islam - International Herald Tribune

If you’ve paid attention to the presidential campaign, you’ve heard the neopopulist story line. C.E.O.’s are seeing their incomes skyrocket while the middle class gets squeezed. The tides of globalization work against average Americans while most of the benefits go to the top 1 percent.

This story is not entirely wrong, but it is incredibly simple-minded. To believe it, you have to suppress a whole string of complicating facts.

the other side of the coin

A Reality-Based Economy - New York Times