Some Google high-speed Internet subscribers received invitations to an experimental telephone service, hinting that Google Fiber tests the waters of telephonic services.
Dubbed Google Fiber Phone, the service might remind you of another famous Google product: Google Voice. Voice connects multiple telephones of a user (be it mobile or landline) into one unique phone number. Read more.
Facebook is rolling out a new audience optimization tool, and we just read a post with a simple useful summary of how to use it.
The “occupation” of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is deeply frustrating to the rational mind for many reasons. Please don’t mistake my views on the unintended consequences of bad law for an endorsement of the occupiers. It’s not.
That said, we should understand that really good, well thought-out, common-sense public policy almost never generates opposition. And sending a 73-year-old to prison a second time for the same offense is not good, well thought-out or common-sense public policy. It is an unintended consequence of bad law.
Here is a good piece on how bad law (draconian minimum sentences) led us to this sorry state of affairs in Oregon.
Bad laws typically are created in an atmosphere that makes it difficult to cooly assess whether the law is actually going to address a problem, or whether it is just a frantic gesture that makes everyone feel like something sensible is being done.
A politician who has experienced a trauma can be a particularly toxic agent in the making of law. Convinced in his grief that he will spare the rest of the world the heartbreak that he suffered, the traumatized politician cobbles together a proposed law that he supposes might have prevented the tragedy that visited his life. A politician acting out of his emotional pain is a difficult challenge for the individual who wants to examine whether the proposed law actually does address a problem and, more important, the possibility the proposed law will cause unintended negative consequences.
Our mandatory minimum sentences grew out of a toxic mix like this. We were traumatized as a society by the “drug culture” of the 1970s and 1980s, and all the attendant crime we supposed could be attributed to drug use. So we embarked upon the futile “war on drugs” and a part of the war was the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws and other measures enacted to make it appear that we were doing something about illegal drugs. No one stopped along the way to observe that drug addiction is a public health problem, not a criminal problem. Had we paid attention to that fact, we might now be living with some effective public health solutions instead of a nation filled with overcrowded prisons.
Which brings us back to Oregon. The drug-war-era draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws spilled over into other areas of law enforcement, giving prosecutors a tool they misused in the Oregon arson-on-federal land case. Is it any wonder that a gang of government haters took up the cause of an old man subjected to double jeopardy by politicians who seem incapable of recognizing their own bad judgment?
Good, calm, clear communication on the front end might have prevented this mess. When laws are being made, rational people with good communication skills ought to come together and answer some simple questions:
This means telling passion-filled politicians to slow down and reflect on things. There should be no such thing as a “fast track” in law-making.
Legislation that is on a fast track is a runaway train headed for disaster.
We will set up all of the online tools you will use to communicate with people who matter to you. Then — working in close association with you — we’ll create the video, images and words to powerfully tell your story.
If you go to the florist to buy a houseplant and they sell you an empty pot, telling you to fill it with your own plant, you’d be disappointed, right?
Then you’ll also be disappointed with a social content marketing firm that sets up a website, a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter account, telling you that you’re now free to fill ’em up with your own content.
CR3At1V3LY 1NKL1N3D LLC is a social content marketing firm that delivers the pots AND the plants. We will set up all of the online tools you will use to communicate with people who matter to you. Then — working in close association with you — we’ll create the video, images and words to powerfully tell your story.
CR3AT1V3LY1NKL1N3D LLC 