In Mazar-i-Sharif, music plays for first time in years.

Gang Land: keeping up New York's mafia. [via BBC News (story)]

A new space race? The European Space Agency plans to put a man on Mars in 30 years. Mars Express is their first step.

NASA is looking at turning management of the space station to a NGO. Is this possibly a way out of the budget problems that threaten to cause cut backs on crew size, construction, and shuttle flights (a situation which has drawn complaints from other space agencies)? [via SpaceRef (story)]

Twice a year, this site surveys the top 500 most powerful supercomputer installations. This year, they've also started working on a list of the top clusters.

A review of this years Extreme Linux Development Forum

Despite previous announcements that surplus blood would be frozen, the Red Cross didn't have the facilities to handle all the blood that was donated in the wake of 9/11. So it's going to burn tens of thousands of pints. A Red Cross vice president offered a somewhat different version of the Washington Post story, saying they have a 10 day supply, have frozen half a day's worth, and has used at least the plasma from all the blood it had to destroy.

Frank Wilczek on the future of particle physics.

U.S. based Internet sites are not bound by foreign law. Of course, this was a U.S. court ruling on the applicability of a French law.

Places of Power photo gallery. [via wood s lot]

A summary of stories on the Bush/bin Laden/Carlyle Group connection. [via wood s lot]

On the renewed push behind a bill banning import of conflict diamonds now that they have been tied to al Qaeda. [via Ethel The Blog]

DOJ field guide to new terrorism legislation [via Red Rock Eater]

Microsoft created the environment for open source to thrive? Right... [via blogdex, register (story)]

The True History of the Net [via blogdex]

This is about the tackiest thing I've seen in a long time. [via blogdex]

NPR interviews Robert Wise, the director of the first Star Trek movie, on the occasion of the director's edition release.