August 7, 2005

It was an innocent question posed during infatuation's first blush. Upon learning that the man she had met a few days earlier at the apartment complex where they lived was a football player, Kimberly Ryan asked Dave Yovanovits, ''So you get the ball and try to score?'' Yovanovits, an offensive lineman for the Jets, did not bother sugarcoating his answer.

THE Internet has been described, by enthusiasts, as a global conversation, a giant encyclopedia or a 24-hour news service -- and by detractors as the world's most technologically advanced time waster. What peeves record-company executives, however, is how many people see it as a free music store. A Supreme Court decision at the end of June, however, may eventually put an ''Out of Business'' sign on that store. In MGM Studios v. Grokster, the court found that the makers of software like Grokster, which lets Internet users freely browse and copy songs from one another, can be sued for their role in encouraging copyright infringement. The record companies' lawyers now have a green light to try to shut down the file-swapping services.

THE FIRST EMANCIPATOR The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves. By Andrew Levy. 310 pp. Random House. $25.95. ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom From the 1790s Through the Civil War. By Melvin Patrick Ely. Illustrated. 640 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.

Jae Seo arrived in the Mets' clubhouse shortly before 11 a.m. yesterday and put his suitcase in front of a locker that was empty except for his uniform. He removed his sunglasses and introduced himself to Danny Graves, whose locker sits two away. ''Jae Seo, nice to meet you,'' Seo said.

Until January, they saw one another only occasionally, meeting for one weekend a month at the low-slung reserve center near the airport here and then going on drills for two weeks in the summer. Some were recent high school graduates, a few were college men, several were police officers. Most of the Marine Reservists from Lima Company were just getting their start in life. But for the young men from Columbus, those lives were changed almost overnight.