NARAL is looking for a few good questions

NARAL Pro-Choice California is asking supporters to send in choice-related questions to the first Republican presidential debate in Los Angeles this Thursday, May 3rd. See What do You Want to Ask the GOP about Choice? on the national Impractical Proposals page.

Fish Wrap News: LATimes editor spikes story over alleged bias

Did the Los Angeles Times kill a front-page article about the dispute over acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide because its writer, Mark Arax, of Armenian descent, exhibited bias by co-signing a letter that asked the paper's editors to follow their own stylebook when referring to the slaughter by the Turks nearly a century ago? Or could it be that managing editor Douglas Frantz went native during his recent posting as the bureau chief in Ankara? Editor at the LAT Kills a Story on Armenian Genocide, Charges of Bias Fly (LA Weekly)

Wi-Fi: Be the first on your block to have a free hotspot

Finally, a big communications outfit gets it.

Unexpectedly, given how out of it it's looked given the difficult time it's had since taking over Adelphia, Time Warner Cable "will let its home broadband customers turn their connections into public wireless hotspots, a practice shunned by most U.S. internet service providers." The giant cable service provider has made a deal with the Iberian upstart Fon (see Impractical Proposals: Fon challenging Starbucks wi-fi), which has forged similar agreements with ISPs across Europe.

"For Fon,...the deal will boost its credibility with U.S. consumers," according to Business Week. "For Time Warner Cable, which has 6.6 million broadband subscribers, the move could help protect the company from an exodus as free or cheap municipal wireless becomes more readily available.

"Fon was founded in Spain in 2005 on the premise that people shouldn't have to pay twice -- once at home, then again in a coffee shop -- for internet access. At first, the company offered software that let members, called Foneros, turn wi-fi routers into shared access points, but it took hours to get up and running.

"In the fall of 2006, Fon, which counts Google Inc. and eBay Inc.'s Skype among its investors, started selling and sometimes giving away its own branded wireless router, called La Fonera. Since then, it has distributed about 370,000 of them worldwide."

The rest of the story: Business Week.

Community: Cooperation Commons

: "Problems of health care, economic development, political and interpersonal conflict, environmental sustainability, resource allocation, disaster relief, urban planning, civil society, democratic governance, technological innovation, intellectual property, public education—the most critical problems of our time—involve social dilemmas and institutions for collective action that are not yet well-understood.

"Evidence from biology, sociology, economics, political science, computer science, and psychology suggest the feasibility of building an interdisciplinary framework for understanding cooperation. Because of institutional specialization, a program of cooperation studies will not happen without purposeful action. In order to catalyze the growth of this enterprise, the Cooperation Project has created:

* An open, shared, knowledge base of insights and resources relevant to cooperation and collective action: the Knowledge Commons
* Several visual maps for customized navigation of the cooperation studies landscape
* A university course with publicly available lecture videos and readings
* A workshop and guidebook for re-perceiving the role of cooperation in business and the technologies that enable it
* The beginnings of a social network of cooperation researchers

"The Cooperation Project has convened expert workshops, published a syllabus, launched online discussion communities, compiled reports, created and published video lectures, and built software prototypes—the beginnings of a Cooperation Toolset. Now we seek to:

* Test and refine these instruments through workshops and further research.
* Attract the best minds in cooperation-related disciplines to help.
* Learn how practitioners can use the knowledge and tools in their domains.
* Make these resources public and invite broad participation.

-- from the website. <http://www.cooperationcommons.com/>

All of the video clips of the classes recorded during The Literacy of Cooperation Lecture Series are available for free: <http://www.cooperationcommons.com/resources>. About pdf.