Another pass through the blogosphere.  Not too much happening, it's the "June gloom" of the techno-world...  But tomorrow is a big day here; the last day of school.  Unbelievable that another year has passed.  Alex is now a 7th grader (oh, no!) and Megan a 3rd grader ((double) oh, no!).  Which means - ta da - it is officially summer.

Remember the discussion about evidence contradicting the Flynn effect (that IQ scores are increasing around the world)?  Thrasymachus asks "What makes you so sure (if you are sure) that IQ measurements of intelligence can be highly inaccurate across time but not across culture?"  I'm not sure of either.  I suspect that they would be more inaccurate across time, primarily because testing methodology has changed. 

Chris Muir's Day-by-Day is excellent, on a daily basis :)  Powerline ran this with the headline: Torture, American style, and made a great comment, "No one thinks that playing Christina Aguilera music, shaving a guy's beard off, and putting him in the same room with a woman are the most effective ways to extract information from a detainee.  The reason why these unorthodox methods were used, obviously, is that the more effective, but less humane, techniques that have been used since time immemorial were banned by our civilian authorities."  Yep.  Bolt cutters would be more effective.  And these POWs are the same people which, if released, would immediately work to kill civilians. 

John Fogerty is touring with John Mellencamp.  Wow.  Now that's a concert to see...  [ I heard it through the grapevine :] 

Chris Anderson discusses Massively parallel culture.  "Here's my take on what the Long Tail is doing to pop culture.  Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we're reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests."  How many of these memes are you familiar with: 

• Ellen Feiss
• The Star Wars Kid
• Dancing baby
• Bert is Evil
• Bonzai Kitten
• Tourist Guy
• MC Hawking
• Leet speak
• Subservient Chicken
• First post

How many would be recognized by your spouse?  By your Mom?  By your kids?  Fascinating.

Matt Haughey notes Tivo has demoed movie downloading and uploading.  I want it.  I want it now.  Downloading from Netflix, $2/movie.  Being able to watch home movies through my Tivo, $0/movie.  Downloading via Bittorrent and watching through my Tivo, priceless. 

CNET reports The slow road to Windows XP.  Over half of all businesses are still on Windows 2000.  This is why Longhorn should become Shorthorn.  [ via Slashdot thread ] 

Clive Thompson explains Why a poker website is bigger than British Airways.  "Man alive. porn, call-service-centers, Canadian Indian reserves -- it's like the wireframe model for a sci-fi novel cowritten by Cory Doctorow and Thomas Friedman."  I, too, wonder whether poker is a fad or a new fixture in global culture.  So many of my meatspace friends are "into it". 

I read about this in Wired: Dreamworks has an awesome video conference room.  Here are two pictures (one, two) and a post about it from Xeni Jardin.  "The setup creates the illusion that distant collaborators are sitting at the same table."  Very cool, I'd love to see this in action.  My personal experience with video conferencing has been uniformly disappointing, but I remain optimistic that someday it will "work". 

From Dave Winer: "I've been hearing rumors that Google is readying an iTunes-clone, based on RSS 2.0, and fully podcast-capable. Multiple sources on this one."  Well that would be interesting.  Of course, where would the content come from?  To me, that was the great breakthrough of iTunes; not the great UI, not the iPod, but the availability of "all" music.  When I'm interested in a new band, 100% of the time I find them on iTunes.  I'm not sure how Google would duplicate that... 

Dave is preparing to release an OPML editor, billed as "Really simple groupware".  RSG.  Has a catchy sound, doesn't it :) 

The Horse's Mouth: straight lines?  Whoa. 

Cory Doctorow notes this gallery of casino carpeting.  I really think the pattern at left would be perfect, don't you? :)