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I’m astonished; A dSLR that shoots 720p video, with adjustable DOF and high ISO capabilities. I know this is a promotional video, but I have nothing to say but… wow.

A beautiful reminder that even the most inane components of sports can make for good advertising.

Man achieves personal flight, again and in some ways less in less impressive fashion that in other recent successes. Head over to Europe and the same goals are achieved in a more spectacular fashion. This seems to harken back to the minor controversy over who really invented the airplane. The Wright Brothers original invention required a catapult for take-off, whereas Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont built the first airplane that didn’t require assistance for take-off, documented and verified by impartial observers. While no one argues that the Wright brothers flew, there are questions about what constitutes enough of a flight to win the accolade of first airplane. By some definitions we’ve achieved time travel already, but there’s a question of substance on precisely what will eventually determine what “time travel” is.
Regardless of where the credit will fall, it seems that we are in a window of time where some decree of personal flight may become a reality. And if history is a dependable teacher, what qualifies as personal flight now and what personal flight will become in the not-too-distant future will be vastly different.

From Time:

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.
…
[CIA Director] Hayden’s attempt to set the record straight [about the US’ practices on Diego Garcia] has failed to quiet British protests about American activities on the island. Instead, an All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has begun an investigation, raising a variety of pointed questions about the island with Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Speaking to the BBC, Labor MP and Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said this week that, “I think it’s important the British government makes plain its … deep concern that it’s not being told the truth and that our territories are being used for these purposes.”
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Hamilton’s Committee insists that Britain can no longer take at face value America’s assurances that it is not torturing prisoners, and, in a clear reference to Diego Garcia, said the U.K. now bears a “legal and moral obligation” to make certain that no British territory abets American rendition flights or interrogations.