contentious.com

When PR goes horribly wrong….

One of the best guides to making what can be a fraught decision for android users.

"Here's rooting in a nutshell: Your Android smartphone is based on Linux. A big, bad, scary computer operating system known only by people with neck beards. (Only, not really. But mostly.) Anyhoo, Android apps need permission to access certain parts of Linux, and not all apps have this special "root" access. That includes a few basic things, like the camera flash, and the ability to take screen shots. There are a bunch of other apps that need root access for other reasons, too, but the basic premise is the same.
So should you root your phone? If you're the type who loves to mess with things, go for it. If you want to squeeze a little more functionality out of your phone, go for it."

"the document that will be the reference point for this energy education revolution (hey, sometimes revolutions start out in very boring ways). While a dozen-page document might sound like something you could punch out in a couple of weeks, the idea is to draw feedback from across the various interested groups and create something that can be used as a single reference point. The project, led by Matthew Inman, an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow with the DOE (who is the embodiment of your favorite high school teacher), will use a wiki to draw feedback from interested parties over the next few months, and will hopefully deliver the first version of the document by the summer, 2011"

""One of his first jobs [at the DoD] was studying command and control of nuclear weapons—in fact he drafted the operational plan for nuclear war in 1961," Bloomsbury Publisher and Editorial Director Peter Ginna told The Observer in an email. "As he said to me on the phone, when he saw Dr. Strangelove with a colleague, they agreed 'It's a documentary.'"

"While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.
That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.
As in zero."

Excellent overview by Alex Howard of O'Reilly Media about the pros, cons, and lack of transparency with the FCC's newly adopted Open Internet order.

"She may be in the best possible place to do it. With a team of experienced editors, a new program called Groupon Academy, and a vigorous — but rewarding — recruiting process, the Web-based coupon company is investing significant time into teaching and training its writers.
"Forty percent of Groupon's writers have prior journalism experience."

This is so interesting… I bought "A House without Windows" at a neighborhood yard sale when I was about 8. It became one of my favorite books, truly magical. I still have my tattered paperback. But I didn't know anything about the intriguing, mysterious story of the author's life until I was in my 30s. Then this story pops up in my podcasts this morning…

Handy instructions for ripping a DVD from a disc on a Mac

Amazing movie, set in Russia. Kind of Pulp Fiction-ish w/ several amazing characters and storylines that start out independent and end up intersecting. Worth watching.

I've been having problems getting my new DVD player and TV to play nice. This might help.

One of the best science fiction stories I've heard in a long time. well worth a listen.

Poly people find themselves with a very large struggle.. There is no lack of love or want that keeps them out of certain relationships. But that doesn’t mean that they should stay in these relationships, either. A lot of genuinely loving relationships can end up being disruptive to the people within those partnerships when those other resources are lacking. And let’s not get into how disruptive they can be for the people around them. That is when the logic wins over love.
This is the hardest part of being polyamorous; knowing that the love doesn’t go away when the relationship does. The cruel hope; optimism leaves you wishing on your favorite star for the missing resources to show up.
Luckily, one of those resources is patience.

"Five years ago, Chris Batty, until this week Gawker’s vice president of sales and marketing, was looking to fill un-purchased ad space on the site. He wanted to forgo the “horrendous creative” of ad networks that litter sites with penny stocks and would keep his sales teams pushing buttons instead of building relationships. Batty sought something prettier, more intimate, more unique for the company’s growing real estate. She didn’t act on Batty’s inspiration, but he did — bringing images of artists’ work to stand alongside Gawker’s blog posts.
"The result was a workaround that gave Gawker full control over its pages’ aesthetics. Born as a stopgap to complement blog posts, Gawker Artists is now taking on an unexpected life of its own — it became a standalone site in 2006 — in large part by thinking of art not merely as a pretty placeholder for text but as something that could survive on its own."