Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

This is one reason why the media is so complicit in many of the issues of the day... they take concepts that were previously abstract and relentlessly make them vivid, personal and immediate. It amplifies the risks around us and easily sells us on a cycle of dissatisfaction.

If you want to create action on the important, figure out how to make it vivid, personal and immediate.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/01/misjudging-risk-and-bad-...

This is the sort of thing where we want to be able to comment and say: PWGD.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/egypt-technology.html

bangpound: Doctor said that most cases today had gunshot wounds from live ammunition to lungs, head, and intestines. http://t.co/9ajvczC #jan25

avinunu: Egypt's uprising and its implications for Palestine ~ Ali Abunimah http://t.co/W6nVSuC #jan25 1:44 PM Jan 29th via Twitter for Mac Retweeted by you and 51 others

(wrote this one myself, based on tweets...)
Egyptians - same ones protesting - protect Antiquity Museum in Cairo from looters until army comes. // A real movement polices itself.

Athletes who are in a wheelchair due to spinal cord injury or are an amputee are in classes T51 – T58. Classes T51 – T54 are for athletes in a wheelchair who are competing in track events, and classes T55 – T58 are for athletes who are competing in field events. An athlete who is classed as T54 is completely functional from the waist up. An athlete who is classed as T53 has restricted movement in their abdominals. An athlete who is classed as either T52 or T51 has restricted movement in their upper limbs.

Around this time of year, some years ago, i caught someone talking on the radio. I stayed in the car after parking it at home, incredibly excited that someone, finally, was talking so well and so straightforwardly about the problems facing us. It was the end of Martin Luther King Jr's I have a dream speech, which some public or college radio station took the time to play all the way through.

Of course Jesus was a Jew. Santa's Jewish too, you know.

You couldn't have a Christian working on Christmas.

Not just Jewish, Santa's Orthodox. Doesn't shave, proud of his beard, and always has a head covering.

On years where Christmas falls on a Saturday, though, there's a Muslim guy who fills in.

[from a note saved 2006 Dec. 24]

There is good vegan chorizo.

Avocado is good.

This should be good.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1891/warm-avocado-salad-with-spicy-ch...

Thanks to chx who somehow came up with it for his scaling chapter.

The author responsible for the car metaphor used in places throughout the book would like it to be known that he doesn't even like cars and has no idea what he was doing.

I never was able to figure out why we saw flags at half-mast in Massachusetts on December 8, on the last leg of our return drive home from visiting the family compound in West Virginia.

The best i can tell is our fair commonwealth chose to honor Pearl Harbor Day (which was the day before) in the most sincere way possible— by failing to see it coming.

http://www.buttercupfestival.com/2-74.htm

$314 for a Feb 1 trip, one way, Boston to Mexico City, on Cheaptickets.

Not easy to find actual government information on visiting Guatemala (and whatever you think of governments, the US and Guatemalan governments are where to get information on visa and travel requirements, not yourtravel.info...) but here it is:

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1129.html
http://www.minex.gob.gt/Visor_Pagina.aspx?PaginaID=21

[written and sent off some days ago-- for the deadline, Dec 1 maybe?]

Next year, we do it right.

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http://bookmaniac.org/feminism-assange-rape-charges-free-speech-and-wiki...

I support Wikileaks and ALL the people who worked to create and maintain it, because it’s important political work. I’m very concerned that once Assange enters the court system he will not be treated fairly.

Dan and Sarah have both been asked, on learning that they celebrate Chanukah (and so by assumption not Christmas), "Do you celebrate Thanksgiving?"

If i ever get asked that, i plan to answer:
Yes i celebrate Thanksgiving, but i do not celebrate Columbus Day.

And this is one i thought of while mom was trying to get off a charity solicitation call, and can be used almost any time:
This conversation has come to a successful conclusion.

And if anything at all religious comes up, i plan to say:
That offends me; I'm part atheist.

Knight Foundation:

http://newschallenge.org/blog/knight-news-challenge-101-basic-breakdown-...
http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/nov/09/knight-news-challenge-2011-t...

Lisa Gansky
http://meshing.it

angel investor, advisor

here because she wrote a book, one of the more interesting business books of the last year- The Mesh

skipped the slide of two rabbits -- 'too long a story'

in nature, waste = food

waste from one system becomes the food or input of another system

what percentage of the day do we use our cars? 8%. [And it's only that high because of the waste of traffic jams!]

delight is contagious (and so is its evil twin)

aka, when bad code from 3.5 years ago finally comes back to bite you.

The one thing that really hung me up was not seeing PHP errors until i just enabled them, to the screen, server wide. That made everything a lot easier to fix. How much of an idiot am i? is there a log hidden somewhere?

Answer: A big idiot. PHP fatal errors get logged to /var/log/syslog

Bangpound says his chapter on dev environment in Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 covers checking syslog.

The Mess (do not read further)

Fun game, you only need pencil and paper. Via Mike (machrider)

5by5 grid

categories across the top
everyone contributes category ideas
and letters
a letter for each row

and everyone has to come up with one thing in each category for each letter

so band names-- starting with N

unique is 10 points, duplicate with someone is 5, blank or rejected is zero.

it was fun.

seems so easy, but when you start to think of things starting with N, your mind goes blank

[late and horribly hastily submitted to the ACME conference]

Self-rule in any group or society needs democratic communication. Equal power or participation call for equal access. A transparent way for people to filter for the most important messages can be an essential tool in working together for a better world.

But most internet communications today follow one of two paths: [1] someone is in charge of deciding what gets on the list, creating a top-down newsletter, [2] a noisy mess of chaos where the loudest members get the most posts.