• Gargoyles – Glorious Gruesome Grotesques | Quazen – Gargoyles – they are strange, bizarre, unpleasant or just plain ugly. They have been hovering around our towns and cities for centuries, for so long that it can be forgotten that they have meaning and purpose. Take a tour of the weird world of the gargoyle.
• No We Can’t : Rolling Stone – The decision to shunt Organizing for America into the DNC had far-reaching consequences for the president's first year in office. For starters, it destroyed his hard-earned image as a new kind of politician, undercutting the post-partisan aura that Obama enjoyed after the election. "There were a lot of independents, and maybe even some Republicans, on his list of 13 million people," says Joe Trippi, who launched the digital age of politics as the campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004. "They suddenly had to ask themselves, 'Do I really want to help build the Democratic Party?'"
• Toyota’s Brake-Safety Crisis: Made in Japan – WSJ.com – It is not surprising that Toyota's response has been dilatory and inept, because crisis management in Japan is grossly undeveloped. Over the past two decades, I cannot think of one instance where a Japanese company has done a good job managing a crisis. The pattern is all too familiar, typically involving slow initial response, minimizing the problem, foot dragging on the product recall, poor communication with the public about the problem and too little compassion and concern for consumers adversely affected by the product. Whether it's exploding televisions, fire-prone appliances, tainted milk or false labeling, in case after case companies have shortchanged their customers by shirking responsibility until the accumulated evidence forces belated disclosure and recognition of culpability. The costs of such negligence are low in Japan where compensation for product liability claims is mostly derisory or non-existent.
• Blame Toyota’s Disaster On Japanese Corporate Culture – Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Japan thinks the entire Toyota disaster has its roots in Japan's deferential corporate culture. Essentially, design problems weren't sufficiently challenged and critical information wasn't relayed properly to management due to Toyota's traditional Japanese corporate culture.
• ‘I’m Not Saying Your Mother’s a Whore’: How Fox News Censored Jon Stewart vs. Bill O’Reilly – Jon Stewart – Gawker – If by "fair cut" O'Reilly means "cut in a manner that left some of Stewart's best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience," then he's absolutely right.
• The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps – Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove. Prior to Brightcove, Jeremy founded Allaire Corporation which was subsequently acquired by Macromedia due to the success of their web development tool ColdFusion. At Macromedia, Jeremy helped create the Macromedia MX (Flash) platform. You can see a recent interview of Jeremy here. As one of the guys who helped build the Flash Platform, we asked him to weigh in on the recent HTML5 v. Flash debate.

  The recent introduction of the new Apple iPad has stirred the discussion over the future of web content and application runtime formats, and shone light onto the political and business battles emerging between Apple, Adobe and Google. These discussion are often highly polarized and irrational. My hope in this post is to help provide some balance and clarity onto this discussion.

• Innovators Use Bing – The findings indicate that the search engine consumers use to find a brand's website may influence not only the perception they have of that brand but, more important for marketers, the decisions they make while on those sites. The study found different degrees of consumer engagement, from visiting to purchasing, based on the search engine used and the brands and vertical categories studied — automotive, travel, retail and wireless.
• No-Flash iPad vs Netbook – May be Apple is too lazy to make iPad capable.

UPDATE: (Huffpost Exclusive)

Closer inspection of a photo of Sarah Palin, during a speech in which she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, reveals several notes written on her left hand. The words “Energy”, “Tax” and “Lift American Spirits” are clearly visible.

Twitter reports, you decide.

The NFL has a history of being aggressive in asserting their rights over intellectual property, from going after churches to asserting that they own the rights to “Who Dat!”.

The NFL’s social media policy for players specifically bans the use of social media during a game.  The NFL has some restrictive terms regarding the “re-broadcast of its games”, including the size of screen you may use and the terms to which an establishment may air a game and make money.    Technically speaking, you are not even allowed to ‘re-broadcast the game’ via Facebook or Twitter, but we all know that 1.) it’s not going to stop anyone and 2.) the NFL essentially is powerless to stop it. If anything Superbowl #44 will be the most social and online Superbowl ever.

The NFL has moderated somewhat this year, encouraging fans to use the Twitter ‘hashtag’ #SB44 when discussing the game, and has provided a page where those tweets and images will be aggregated.  Since they are not editing or censoring any of the streamed content, be on the lockout for ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ and nipples covered with Chinese throwing stars.

• FORTUNE MAGAZINE – informational images –
• Born Poor? | Santa Fe Reporter – Bowles’ most recent paper, published in the October 2009 issue of Science, was a huge project with 25 collaborators. It examines how wealth is transferred from parents to children in hunter-gatherer societies versus agricultural societies.
  That might seem distant from the busy unemployment offices on Guadalupe Street. But everyone can relate to his chosen subject: inequality. He studies the economic differences between people with the same discipline that Jane Goodall studies chimpanzees or Stephen Hawking studies the cosmos.
• McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Real Timothy McSweeney. – So many years later, when I was conceiving a name for this literary journal, the name Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern occurred to me. It made sense on many levels. I was able to honor my Irish side of the family and also allude to this mysterious man and the sense of possibility and even wonder he'd brought to our suburban home.
• Has Toyota’s brand perception eroded below that of Hummer? At least one survey thinks so — Autoblog – According to YouGov BrandIndex – which we were admittedly not familiar with until running across this interesting little nugget – Toyota's -17.1 rating on February 3rd put the automaker below more traditional bottom-feeders like Hummer, which scored a -10.7 on the very same day. Just two weeks ago, the very same poll had Toyota up near the top with a positive perception rating of 28. It may not be the most meaningful statistic you'll run across today, but it's an interesting sidebar nonetheless.
• Free FLV Converter | YouTube Converter | BENDER CONVERTER – Bender Converter is an easy-to-use online application for downloading and converting videos from such services as YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Wat.tv, Veoh, Vids.MySpace.com, Google Video and many others. You can download video and audio in MP3, AVI, FLV Flash, iPod / iPhone and other popular formats. The service is fast and doesn't require you to register. All that you need is a link to a page with a video and our software.
• The Dynamite Prize in Economics | MetaFilter – As a reaction towards the financial crisis the Real-World Economics Review will award the Dynamite Prize in Economics to the three economists who contributed most to blowing up the global economy. The Real-World Economic Review is the central organ of the movement for Post-Autistic Economics which is critical about the current mainstream in economics — in particular microeconomics and neoclassical theorists.

  Voting is now open and the nominees are:

• Mule Design Studio’s Blog: The Failure of Empathy – The people don’t want “tablet computers” with Ubuntu and OpenID (worst name ever for a product attempting broad acceptance). They could honestly give a shit whether it’s a closed or open system. And, let’s be really honest, they probably care as much about DRM as they do about baseball players juicing; by which I mean not very much at all. They want things to work most of the time, and be easy to fix when they don’t. And if the process by which it happens is “magic” they are totally cool with that.
• The Scoop on Semen – Best. Infographic. Ever.
• The History of Tipping – Although the addition of a gratuity or tip to a bill is now largely perceived as a gift for good service, the origin of the practice may be traced back to 18th Century English pubs when tipping was considered an essential incentive for better service. These days, many workers rely on tips as a substantial and necessary part of their income. In 2003, tips from U.S. restaurants alone were estimated at a whopping $26 billion. There are many emotional reasons people tip, such as to avoid embarrassment or to feel better about themselves because they know a tip is expected. Employees who provide services may also use tricks of the trade to manipulate these emotions to receive a larger gratuity. Have a look at the history of tipping below.
• A special report on social networking A world of connections – Online social networks are changing the way people communicate, work and play, and mostly for the better, says Martin Giles[.]
• How cars can trap consumers in a mortgage mess – Ironically, Americans are becoming financially trapped by the very suburbs they thought would free them. It's not just the social norms — the keeping up with the Joneses, the club memberships and mall-as-entertainment — it's the transport in and out of the suburbs that destroys a family's flexibility. My family can live very lean if we need to, reducing our expenses to as little as $2,000 for a month or two while we wait out a difficult period, even paying our mortgage on time. That suburban family with the safe cul-de-sac and the big back yard for the kids can't do that without a visit from the big flatbed tow truck of repossession — and no way for the children to get to school, no way for mom and dad to buy groceries and go to work. Instead, the mortgage is left unpaid while the payments on everything that can be taken back are made.
• Looking back, ahead at federal taxing, spending – USATODAY.com – This tax calculator will give you a rough idea of your federal tax bill — and where your tax money went — from 1940 through 2010. Caveats: The calculator is for a taxpayer who files individually, uses the standard deduction instead of itemizing, and has one exemption. The calculator also figures your Social Security and Medicare taxes.

  We've adjusted all figures for inflation, using the consumer price index. Results may be skewed for the very wealthy and the very poor. Upper-income filers are more likely to have income subject to alternative minimum tax, but they are also more likely to have income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. Lower-income filers can take advantage of the earned income tax credit, which can reduce the tax bill of a single filer.

If you haven’t gotten a spiffy vanity-URL for Facebook, like firstname.lastname, you may want to do it soon.  Facebook is rumored to finally roll-out a comprehensive email feature – Project Titan – enthusiastically referred to as a “Gmail killer”.