Richard Garriott, a video game designer, hitched a ride to the International Space Station with the Russians earlier this week. He brought with him a hard drive containing the digitized DNA sequences of both celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and a Playboy model) and ordinary schmucks. The idea is that, in the event of some planetary calamity that wipes out the human race, a “backup copy” of human genetic information will be kept safe in orbit.

Of course, nobody asked me for any of my DNA. Which is too bad, because I’m having a lot of fun imagining aliens trying to recreate me from scratch:

NARG: Hey, Zerl, c’mere and look at this.

ZERL: What is it?

NARG: Come here and look at the specimen in Vat 42. Does that look right to you?

ZERL: Hmm, it is scrawnier than the others. Are you sure you didn’t get the sequence wrong?

NARG: No, I checked that. It’s the exact same sequence that we found in that primitive archive.

ZERL: Strange. Well, let it mature and then stick it in the cage with that oddly proportioned female. It might cheer her up.

NARG: Can’t we just eat its brains? I mean, look at that ginormous head.

ZERL: A tempting thought. Perhaps later, after the female grows tired of it.

Below is a clip from a ballet performance entitled Hand in Hand, in which both of the dancers are amputees. It’s a lovely bit of culture with which to kick off the weekend:

Much of my weekend will be spent reading through a thick stack of proposals. There are almost forty of them, so I can’t give in to my usual procrastinating impulses and put it off until Sunday evening.

In honor of Blog Action Day, I thought I’d do a short post on poverty and disability from a global perspective. The World Bank cites the following statistics on the subject:

• In Uganda, households headed by a person with a disability are 38 percent more likely to be poor. 
• In Serbia, the poverty rate of disabled people is 70 percent.
  
• In Honduras, people with disabilities have an illiteracy rate of 51 percent compared to 19 percent for the general population. 
  
• In the United States, there is almost a 70 percent rate of unemployment among disabled people.
  
• And in some parts of the world, as many as 80 percent of disabled children die before the age of 5, even in areas where the overall child mortality rate has been brought down to under 20 percent.

Poverty and disability are constant companions, both in the developed and developing worlds. Policymakers are beginning to understand that disability need not be an automatic sentence to lifelong poverty. Smart investments in education, health care, and infrastructure can go a long way towards bringing people with disabilities into the economic mainstream. Unfortunately, old attitudes and prejudices persist. One of the greatest challenges of disability advocates in coming decades will be to convince their leaders to raise their expectations for people with disabilities as students, workers, and citizens.

There’s some good music to be found on the intertubes lately. For example:

“Paper Planes” by I’m from Barcelona–IfB is a Swedish musical collective with a big, sweeping sound. Think Polyphonic Spree, only not as saccharine. This is probably one of those songs that you either adore or detest. But it makes me smile every time I hear it.

“Acid Tongue” by Jenny Lewis–The lead singer of Rilo Kiley has always had some country in her. But there isn’t a hint of twang to be found in this spare, aching arrangement. I’m thinking that Jenny Lewis and Neko Case should start touring together.

“Paris” by Friendly Fires–Nobody will remember this song in five years, but it’s a fun mix of rock and electronica with a soaring, shiny chorus. It opens with the line “One day we’re gonna live in Paris, I promise” and it doesn’t get any less earnest from there, but somehow it works.

A little bit of Minnesota Nice rubbed off on John McCain yesterday. The video below is from a McCain rally in Lakeville where the Arizona senator admonished a supporter who described Obama as an “Arab”.

McCain may finally be realizing that his campaign rallies are acquiring a distinct torches-and-pitchforks tone. Or he may just be responding to pressure from GOP party bosses who may be nervous about independent voters’ reactions to TV clips of McCain supporters shouting “Kill him!” and “Terrorist!”.

William F. Buckley, an unapologetic conservative elite, once said, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Watch the video below from another McCain rally in Ohio and ask yourself which kind of crowd McCain and Palin are attracting.