You've no doubt heard about this by now, as it's been one of the most popular stories in the media for the past week.

If you haven't, here are the bullet points, excerpted from the New York Times article.

Two Domino's employees made a video in the restaurant's kitchen. In the video, one provides narration while the other performs gross violations of health-code standards. Within days:

1. The video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.
2. References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for "Domino's."
3. Discussions about it had contaminated Twitter.
4. The perception of Domino's quality among consumers went from positive to negative, according to online surveys at YouGov.

Photographs of ex-Domino's employees Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setzer from the Conover, N.C., Police Department

In just a few days, Domino's reputation was damaged. "We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea," said Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre. "Even people who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino's, and that's not fair."

This is an interesting practical situation. Unlike in the case of Virgin Airlines, this incident does not seem to be as clearly attributable to the brand itself. Indeed, the analysis of the Domino's incident (and the recent similar one at Amazon, although that one may be slightly less apropos to my point here) has almost exclusively addressed damage control strategies for incidents of this type, treating them as rather more like a hurricane than as a symptom of endemic organizational problems.

I wonder, though, if there isn't something even more interesting to be found by treating them as the latter. If we can justly do this, and we do, then perhaps we can comport ourselves to the disease, rather than the symptom. I'm thinking about this now, and I'll try to write about it next week.

For a short while back in September, DLB was working in collaboration with our long-time friend Dan over at Barack Obama HQ. During the course of that collaboration, we generated a video about the cost of the Iraq War, which, because of the constant issue shuffle, never really made sense for the campaign. We talked to him again today, and got the go-ahead to just upload it to YouTube ourselves. So, if you've got any friends or family who are still undecided, maybe now's a good time to remind them about the the other 1.9 trillion dollars the current administration's taken away from American infrastructure, education, and social welfare.

Here's a handy url to pass along to your friends: http://tr.im/1pt9. Don't forget to vote tomorrow!

One particular point of pride for us here at DLB is the fact that we post on BlogLESS six days a week, and we simultaneously manage to keep it valid.

For the most part, once you've mentally committed to valid HTML, this kind of feat rarely causes a problem. However, for a very brief moment this fine Wednesday, I thought I'd share with you three fairly non-intuitive things that we've run into that caused us validation errors, and what you can do to prevent them.

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About a month ago, I wrote a post for BlogLESS about how to display video content from Vimeo with Valid XHTML using Drew McLellan's Flash Satay technique.

Recently, it occurred to me to make this explicit: You can do the exact same thing with videos from YouTube! So, in the interest of continued blog validation, let's take another look at what makes an embedded video invalid, and how to avoid it. We'll start with the generics, and then move on to the slightly more finicky YouTube requirements.

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I love Target commercials. I have never been able to figure out why exactly, but I find them utterly charming and classy.

I can tell you what I do know: They have great music and production values. Helvetica titles. Modelesque multicultural actors. You never see a price, store interior, or employee-- they emphasize brands: those of products, designers, and Target itself.

The formula seems simple and innocent enough, yet it forms a gestalt that my lizard brain finds irresistible. Suddenly I’m pushing around a red shopping cart full of limited edition designer sheets, a case of Gatorade, and a giant decorator wall clock.

I know what triggers this behavior, so I am careful to watch for the signs. Hence, I was quick to notice when the latest Target commercial seemed to mark a change in tactics.

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This one is a little late to the table, but if you somehow missed both the original airing and the news aggregators out there that picked it up, it may yet be news to you.

A few weeks ago, the Republican party released an advertisement promoting their new slogan “the change you deserve”.

Roll the clip:

The logo test would have been instructive but we should also add to that, as commenter Mark Goren suggests, the Google test. A good brand shouldn’t work just as well alongside your competitor’s logo, nor should it link to anything embarrassing or otherwise counter-message online (like a powerful prescription antidepressant).

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The New York Times' Jeffery Rosen wrote a nice article this weekend about the inner workings of Google's international legal team, in their efforts to comply with varying national standards of free speech protection. It's well worth reading, and I've posted some quotes here to pique your interest.

To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king. One reason they’re good at the moment is they live and die on trust, and as soon as you lose trust in Google, it’s over for them.

— Tim Wu, Columbia Law, former scholar in residence at Google

During the heyday of Microsoft, people feared that the owners of the operating systems could leverage their monopolies to protect their own products against competitors. That dynamic is tiny compared to what people fear about Google. They have enormous control over a platform of all the world's data, and everything they do is designed to improve their control of the underlying data. If your whole game is to increase market share, it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.

— Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law

The whole article is a nervewracking look into the processes behind Google/YouTube censorship.

The idea of a 20-something with a laptop in San Bruno (or anywhere else, for that matter) interpreting community guidelines for tens of millions of users might not instill faith in YouTube’s vetting process.

Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, and her colleagues arguably have more influence over what counts as valid and legal online expression than anyone else on the planet. (Image via)