On February 11 a Federal judge ruled that the City of Los Angeles violated the American with Disabilities Act and various California Codes by failing to meet the needs of residents with disabilities in its emergency management program. This is the first such ruling of its kind and carries tremendous implications for emergency managers and […]
By now I'm sure you've heard that DHS is finally dumping the color coded terror alert system that's been the butt of a lot of jokes over the years. Seems as if the DHS leadership has finally accepted what a lot of us have said from the start: it's a dumb idea. What we really […]
Download Consultants Are They Really Worth the Money Jan 2011
You may have noticed a series of articles recently on mass animal deaths. Google has now set up a website to track these incidents. This is an interesting example of how the Internet is changing how we collect and analyze data. The normal scientific method is to develop a hypothesis, determine what data would prove […]
One of the terms I use a lot is the psychological term "cognitive dissonance", the situation where what we say and what we do conflict. In today's San Francisco Chronicle,columnist Johnathan Gurwitz really nails the latest in terrorism theater from TSA. As it struggles to gain support for its "see something, say something" campaign, TSA is […]
By now you may have heard of "Santa John" Toomey, the popular seasonal worker who played Santa for over 20 years at Macy's in San Francisco. Toomey was fired last week for allegedly making an off-color joke to an older couple. The story spread from the local papers to the Internet and Toomey just appeared on the Jay […]
My colleague, Johnathan Bernstein, recently ended a blog on the Chilean mine rescue with this comment: Truly successful crisis management does more than simply resolve the issues at hand. By making public the steps being taken to rectify and resolve issues, little room is left for damaging rumor and innuendo to creep in and stakeholders […]