Friday, July 8, 2011
Farming and Mining
I've been on both sides of the farming/mining divide and I heartily recommend the former over the latter.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
It's Over; We lost. No Wait... We Lost, but it's NOT Over?
A bunch of ex-politicians and policy guys say that the War on Drugs is lost. It is and it has been. On the matter of the legalization of marijuana, the "science" is settled. Those who continue to support legalization are on par with the flat earthers or birthers. These are folsk whose commitment to a view exists entirely independent of observed reality.
40,000 fatalities in Mexico. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world (n.b., some doubt China's figures, so maybe we're number two?). The trillions of dollars down the drain.
This isn't a matter of debating whether or not substance abuse is "good." It's a matter of the fact that prohibition is far WORSE than substance abuse. By a long shot. It's not even close.
Now, this report will come to nothing. We deserve the government we get because it's the government that we vote for. Not even California has managed to legalize marijuana, and it's pretty safe to say that the waste of blood and treasure will continue until the entire United States wakes up. The world will likely follow. Other nations would probably love to stop watching their citizens die in the tens of thousands due to our tilting at windmills, but the US exerts tremendous pressure on their governments to toe the line.
It's a sad, sad state of affairs. Think of what good could instead be done with those lives and that money. This is a global tragedy of huge proportion - dwarfing all the tsunamis and earthquakes combined.
If you've been voting for those who support prohibition, shame on you.
40,000 fatalities in Mexico. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world (n.b., some doubt China's figures, so maybe we're number two?). The trillions of dollars down the drain.
This isn't a matter of debating whether or not substance abuse is "good." It's a matter of the fact that prohibition is far WORSE than substance abuse. By a long shot. It's not even close.
Now, this report will come to nothing. We deserve the government we get because it's the government that we vote for. Not even California has managed to legalize marijuana, and it's pretty safe to say that the waste of blood and treasure will continue until the entire United States wakes up. The world will likely follow. Other nations would probably love to stop watching their citizens die in the tens of thousands due to our tilting at windmills, but the US exerts tremendous pressure on their governments to toe the line.
It's a sad, sad state of affairs. Think of what good could instead be done with those lives and that money. This is a global tragedy of huge proportion - dwarfing all the tsunamis and earthquakes combined.
If you've been voting for those who support prohibition, shame on you.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Was he murdered, martyred or assassinated?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Can God make a rock that he can't move?
The important lesson here is that two wrongs make a right.
What do Jesus, MLK, Gandhi, the Buddha and the Dalai Lama have in common?
Weak on terror.
Can God make a rock that he can't move?
The important lesson here is that two wrongs make a right.
What do Jesus, MLK, Gandhi, the Buddha and the Dalai Lama have in common?
Weak on terror.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Virgin America Support: A pretty useful Twitter experience
So I had a flight canceled, got some credits and tried to transfer them to my bro. The process was long, aggravating and unsuccessful: by the time we finally managed to negotiate the human-faceless megacorp divide, tickets had gone up by more than the credits were worth in the first place.
Like so many other humans in this position, I posted a juvenile rant on the internet, resolved to use other airlines in the future (not that I expected that to help) and figured that was that.
Except Virgin America responded. This blog you see, it's set up to tweet headlines and links whenever I post, through my attached twitter account. Virgin America clearly has alerts set up to monitor their online reputation and began following me shortly after my post.
I followed back.
After a week or so of high-latency (on both sides) direct-message back-and-forth, VA reviewed the situation and opted to credit my brother for the difference -- on his credit card, not simply an account for future flights. They basically left us where we would have been had the application of my credits to his flight actually worked when we first tried it.
Now, that's pretty cool. When I was posting my rant, I knew that this was the age of Google Alerts and job descriptions like Social Marketing Manager, so I did know there was an outside chance that my words might eventually hit the screen of someone in VA's employ. I didn't however expect them to respond or attempt to make things right.
So what is there to say? As an individual customer, it's pretty clear that I don't matter much to Virgin:
Of course the end-game arithmetic doesn't work out: if only squeaky wheels get the grease then customers should all become squeaky. Dealing with squeaky wheels over twitter and refunds has got to be more expensive than actually interacting with your customers in the first place. That said, the bet on their end is obviously that most wheels won't squeak, i.e., most folks will just suck it up and move on. That bet is, I think, a good one.
At the end of the day, Virgin stepped up and me and the bro are pretty happy. I'll fly with them again if they're going my way and I felt like I should write this post to pass on the rest of the story. I'll still view any potential phone or email experience with dread, but as long as I can keep things simple and just deal with the computers like I'm supposed to, I expect a pretty good experience. I'm stoked that they journeyed out to my station in the outer rim of the blogosphere in order to go the extra step to get things sorted out. And they still offer the power of flight - that's a pretty convincingly awesome thing to be purchased at such a low price.
Like so many other humans in this position, I posted a juvenile rant on the internet, resolved to use other airlines in the future (not that I expected that to help) and figured that was that.
Except Virgin America responded. This blog you see, it's set up to tweet headlines and links whenever I post, through my attached twitter account. Virgin America clearly has alerts set up to monitor their online reputation and began following me shortly after my post.
I followed back.
After a week or so of high-latency (on both sides) direct-message back-and-forth, VA reviewed the situation and opted to credit my brother for the difference -- on his credit card, not simply an account for future flights. They basically left us where we would have been had the application of my credits to his flight actually worked when we first tried it.
Now, that's pretty cool. When I was posting my rant, I knew that this was the age of Google Alerts and job descriptions like Social Marketing Manager, so I did know there was an outside chance that my words might eventually hit the screen of someone in VA's employ. I didn't however expect them to respond or attempt to make things right.
So what is there to say? As an individual customer, it's pretty clear that I don't matter much to Virgin:
- They strung me and the wife along at the gate for hours rather than canceling the flight. An earlier cancellation would have let me schedule a new flight in a timely enough manner to make it back on Friday. It also would have allowed a decent night's sleep before working online from Virginia. Canceling the flight costs them a lot of money, enough that looking out for our experiences was secondary. They did provide soda and chips though.
- Their email contact system has an indefensible character count limit that clearly discriminates against users with my level of verbosity. Even after I edited for length, I still to this date have received no response from my two submissions through that form.
- 30 seconds on their phone system and you know that VA is not concerned about phone contacts being an important part of the customer interaction. It takes a while to even convince the thing that you want to speak a human and once it concedes that point, it takes FAR longer to actually make that happen. I have a decent amount of experience working as front-line support, working with front-line support and even managing front-line support. I know that putting a human at the other end of the line is expensive, but I also know that computer-human reactions are nowhere near as satisfying. Some companies pay extra in order to win this experience. VA does not.
- When my wife called to explain the exact situation that I blogged about, she received no sympathy nor action from support.
- They responded pretty quickly after my post went live. The idea of companies actively monitoring their online reputation probably seems obvious to those who would read this blog, but I'm pretty sure there are many corps messing that up, probably even in the airline industry.
- They did respond slowly, but 1) they let me know it would take a while and 2) they did respond. They had no legal need, there was no prior commitment that they were honoring. There was no explicit quid pro quo - I made no claim that I would remove or edit my rant and they didn't ask.
Of course the end-game arithmetic doesn't work out: if only squeaky wheels get the grease then customers should all become squeaky. Dealing with squeaky wheels over twitter and refunds has got to be more expensive than actually interacting with your customers in the first place. That said, the bet on their end is obviously that most wheels won't squeak, i.e., most folks will just suck it up and move on. That bet is, I think, a good one.
At the end of the day, Virgin stepped up and me and the bro are pretty happy. I'll fly with them again if they're going my way and I felt like I should write this post to pass on the rest of the story. I'll still view any potential phone or email experience with dread, but as long as I can keep things simple and just deal with the computers like I'm supposed to, I expect a pretty good experience. I'm stoked that they journeyed out to my station in the outer rim of the blogosphere in order to go the extra step to get things sorted out. And they still offer the power of flight - that's a pretty convincingly awesome thing to be purchased at such a low price.
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