Missing Mary Road

asif ali zardari writes in the washington post. rest assured, it’s hogwash. more than half the article talks about his sorry life and his mourning for his wife.

Pakistan is at a crossroads. The gravity of the situation has led me, at the insistence of my Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), to run for president in Saturday’s elections. My children and I are still mourning our beloved leader, wife and mother, Benazir Bhutto. We did not make the decision for me to run lightly. But we know what is at stake. Chief among the challenges that all Pakistanis face is the threat of global terrorism, demonstrated again in this week’s assassination attempt against Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.

Returning Pakistan’s presidency to democratic governance is a huge step in our country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. I want to help complete this process. I owe it to my party and my country but above all to my wife, who lost her life striving to make Pakistan free, pluralist and democratic.

Pakistani politics has always been a struggle between democratic forces around the country and an elite oligarchy, located exclusively in a region stretching between Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad. The provinces of Sind, the Northwest Frontier (Pashtunkhwa) and Baluchistan, as well as all of rural Punjab, have often been excluded from governance.

keep reading.

there’s some decent analysis here from reuters.

Opera’s founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner posted his thoughts on the Choose Opera blog about new Google Chrome browser, which was released yesterday.

A lot of companies want to put their stamp on the Web, and a browser is the primary tool to bring that experience to life. So it was with no real surprise that Google launched a browser yesterday. It is flattering that they chose several features from Opera to include in their browser.

We believe in offering free choice of browsers. We welcome competition because it helps drive the Web forward and offers more robust choices for consumers.

As you know, Google has been a great partner to Opera in the past and will be in the future. Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and our desktop browser all include Google as the default search. We are also working with them to bring Gears into our desktop and mobile products. Collaboration with Google will continue to be an important aspect of our product development.

In welcoming Google to the browser industry, we also call on them to seize the new responsibility they now have to ensure their products and services work in all browsers. This way, they will protect the free and open Web.

Update: More from the CEO here.

Imitation is the best form of flattery.

and also Google Chrome ‘borrows’ from Opera browser Opera CEO welcomes Chrome to browser wars

Ponder this: Will a pumpkin, as it nears the speed of sound, turn into pie in the sky?

In a machine shop in a sea of cornfields here in a place that calls itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World, this is not a theoretical question. For months now, a team of volunteers has worked earnestly on an effort to send a gourd soaring at Mach I.

Their invention is an 18-ton, 100-foot cannon made of 10-inch-diameter plastic pipe, powered by compressed air and mounted on an old cement mixer. Dubbed the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator, it has already set a world distance record, flinging a pumpkin 2,710 feet — at a velocity of more than 600 miles per hour, literally faster than some speeding bullets.

At the speed of sound, minimally about 750 mph, the distance record could easily be shattered, assuming the pumpkin doesn’t shatter first. For this team of self-described “high-tech rednecks,” this is a matter of some urgency and pride, says Matt Parker, a Morton businessman and a team leader. For the team is, at the moment, the undisputed champion of the arcane sport known colloquially to its practitioners as “punkin’ chunkin’.”

On Nov. 1, all eyes will be on the Q36 when it defends its title as World Champion Punkin’ Chunker in Lewes, a small town on the Delaware coast.