The Ole filter cranks up again...

Great commentary by Rand Simberg on Fox about the Columbia Accident Investigation report.  "The Gehman Commission is to be commended...  There's one area that they get tragically wrong, however - in their recommendations for the future of manned space transport."  Read it - good stuff.

Steven Den Beste shares an interesting insight into the Formation of Residues.  The essential idea is that certain kinds of inequality are self-perpetuating.  The resulting problems are difficult to solve, because the underlying inequality is stable.  Fascinating, well worth slogging through the whole thing.

Apropos, Gweilo lists average IQs from various countries.  What a wide band.  I find it amazing that there are entire countries where the average IQ is below 70.  Now we have to take this list and correlate it with populations and birth rates, and then extrapolate forward 50 years.  Stay tuned...

WiFi Rides the Rails; Wired reports a train running through Silicon Valley will provide WiFi for its passengers.  Seems like a great idea, you've got to believe about 75% of those riders will have laptops.

Jeff Jarvis asks will the Democratic and Republican conventions be WiFi-ed?  They should be, eh?  It certainly would be interesting to read some realtime blogging from the convention floor!

You know those "wireless" cameras?  Well they aren't really wireless, because they require power.  Or they did; here's one which uses solar power, so it truly is wireless.  Cool.

When you were a kid, did your parents have a station wagon?  Mine did - I remember a Ford Torino which was about 100' long.  It was the SUV of the 1950s and '60s...  Anyway here's a great collection of old station wagon ads.  [ via Boing Boing ]

Anil Dash takes on bottled water.  Do you drink bottled water?  Did you know it is probably worse than tap water?  Aha, I didn't think so.  Well, I report, you decide.

Apparently 2D annimation is dead at Disney.  3D movies are doing better at the box office - Pixar's especially - so that's their future direction.  But are 3D movies doing well because they're 3D, or just because they're better movies?  I think Finding Nemo would have been a great story 40 years ago with hand-annimated 2D, too.

Does anyone have experience with Vindigo?  It is now available on Sprint PCS (i.e. on my Treo 300).  I can't tell whether it would be really cool or really useless.  Please tell me if you've had experience with it...

CNN reports a German study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that eating dark chocolate can lower blood pressure.  Ottmar concludes "There you have it....dark chocolate, red wine and good music is all you need."  Amen.

Samsung has gotten into the PVR act; they've announced a 100 hour Tivo / DirectTV receiver with dual tuners.  These things are becoming pretty standard, eh?  [ via PVRBlog ]  (Interestingly, they are all really Linux computers under the hood.)

CNet thinks another recent announcement is important: EchoStar announced a Dish Player with a 100 hour PVR.  "And for the first time, EchoStar will specifically promote the Dish Player's 30-second ad-skipping feature."  Interesting...  and oh yeah, the price is right - free.

On the other hand, Gearbits reports Scientific Atlantic DVR Not So Hot.  (DVR?)  It has dual tuners and 80GB, but it sounds like it pretty much just doesn't work.

PVRBlog has a nice post on Home Media Option sharing.  Apparently you can share all sorts of stuff with your neighbors...

... like a marriage proposal!  (I am not making this up.)

And to go with your PVR, your next TV should be a widescreen.  I know mine's going to be.  I'm just waiting for those plasma TVs to become affordable :)

What happens when a huge Macy's storefront display is run by Windows?  This.  I hate when that happens.  (And it happens to me a lot; Windows paging sucks!  Really really.)  [ via Scoble ]

Creative Slips hosts the 49th Carnival of the Vanities, featuring a Star Trek theme.  If you're looking for some new filters to apply, check it out :)

I liked Wicked Thoughts' on Saddam's Progeny.  (Souflet, Say hey, eBay, and Olé...)