Dwight Howard has proven that just when you think you've seen it all in this league, some superstar takes us to a whole new soap-opera stratosphere. LeBron and The Decision. Then Carmelo Anthony's Melodrama. Then Chris Paul getting traded to both L.A teams. And now Dwight Howard and The Indecision ... also known as The Dwightmare. There's a reason I've been telling friends for 20 years that this the best beat in North American sports writing. 

To build a mass movement quickly, it helps to have an over-simplified, emotive narrative with a single demand. It also helps to tells people that by doing easy tasks – sharing a link on Facebook, buying a bracelet — they can save lives. Central to the formula is that the agency of local actors gets downplayed to hype up the importance of action by outsiders. But all those ingredients inevitably lead to eventual failure when the simple solutions can’t fix the complex reality. The movement walks away, disillusioned. And in the meantime untold resources have been expended on solutions that have been out of step with what local activists need.

From Felix Salmon's excellent analysis of the chicanery that is Mike Daisley.

Everyone tells their MBA-wielding friends that they should learn to code: “Anyone can do it,” or “It’s going to be the new literacy.” People think code is the basis of a working product. But what about design? How often are people told that they should “learn to design”?

Beyond that, his durability is starting to feel superhuman — you could almost throw "Kobe Bryant injuries" into the Tyson Zone.

Kobe has a concussion and a broken nose? Just give him a mask and some Advil. Kobe broke his left arm in three places? He's listed as "probable" for tonight. Kobe's left leg was severed in a car accident and reattached in a nine-hour surgery? I guess that means he can only play 35 minutes a game instead of 40.

I've said it before, but when you see all of the players who miss multiple games with muscle strains, lose focus over off-court issues or just don't show up night after night, you appreciate the majesty of a guy who eats, sleeps and breathes basketball with a keen awareness that 'the moment' is now, and the time to be lazy or sore is when it's over for good.

What is so impressive about Kobe Bryant, whether you love him and the Lakers or not, is that the guy never bitches about his ailments, never misses games for maladies that would keep others out for days-to-weeks, and equally important, finds a way to be effective while playing hurt.

Mind you, this is a guy who last year played through a broken, now disfigured, finger, and found a way to play his game. He coped with bone on bone knees all last year, and was still Kobe.

He rolled his ankle in a way that when I saw it, I was SURE his season was over, and yet, he played the rest of the season, and was mostly Kobe.

This season, he tore ligaments in his wrist, and not only missed no games, but is playing MVP-style basketball.

So a broken nose. Just a flesh wound for Kobe.

Rubin said that the biggest problem for Android on tablets is "there's no organized way for consumers to recognize it as a viable platform," and that Google wants consumers to see its tablets as part of the broader Android ecosystem. "The educated consumer realizes it now that they're either picking the Apple ecosystem or the Microsoft ecosystem or the Google ecosystem... we're going to do a better job at making people understand what ecosystem they're buying into.

I think that Rubin's articulation is exactly right, but his assessment of the current reality for Android in the tablets segment falls into the trap of confusing attributes with outcomes.

The successful tablet device makers (iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook) all have nailed the media side of the equation - music, movies, books and TV shows.

Until Google gets this piece right, I think they'll struggle, in and above all of the challenges that they face on the segmentation side. Moreover, one has right to be dubious that the media players will play ball with Google, given how fully the company has tried to end-run their IP.

“Customers will not pay literally a penny more than the true value of the product” — Ron Johnson, former senior vice president, Apple Retail, and J. C. Penney’s new CEO

Profit margins of Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Home Depot and Apple over the past decade.

While some may view the wholesale destruction of numerous brick-and-mortar segments as inevitable, we all have a vested interest in seeing the retail industry reboot itself for the modern age. Because as Main Street goes, so does America.

This is no mere platitude when you consider that 13.3 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are in retail (that’s 14.7 million jobs in all, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), and retail is deeply tied to consumer spending, the same spending bracket that accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy. This doesn’t even factor in the natural synergy between our domestic manufacturing base and Main Street retail as a sales channel for that base.

Read the full piece at GigaOM, and let me know what you think.

Some real gems.