O2 #3 Why No One Cares What You Think (And How to Stop Being So Freaking Boring) (via CopyBlogger)

It’s time for a little tough love, okay?

All that stuff you’re publishing … all those blog posts and videos and podcasts and white papers … it’s not getting you anywhere, is it?

You thought it would. People told you to get busy online, to say what you think, to publish lots of content, because if you do, people will find you and love you and support you and everything will be perfect, forever and ever and ever.

But it was a lie. Not totally, no, because publishing great content is crucial. But there were a few critical pieces missing.  

1. That no one cares what you think
2. That being boring is a sin punishable by death
3. That you have to connect with readers before you start teaching them

Read the rest of this instructional article for bloggers and similars here: PublishingContent

O2 #2 "Impossible" to end drug trade, says Calderón (via The Economist)

ENDING the consumption and the trafficking of illegal drugs is “impossible”, according to Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s outgoing president. In an interview with The Economist Mr Calderón, whose battle with organised crime has come to define his six years in office, said that countries whose citizens consume drugs should find "market mechanisms" to prevent their money from getting into the hands of criminals in Latin America.

In an interview recorded last month for this week’s special report on Mexico, Mr Calderón said: "Are there still drugs in Juárez [a violent northern border city]? Well of course, but it has never been the objective…of the public-security strategy to end something that it is impossible to end, namely the consumption of drugs or their trafficking…

"[E]ither the United States and its society, its government and its congress decide to drastically reduce their consumption of drugs, or if they are not going to reduce it they at least have the moral responsibility to reduce the flow of money towards Mexico, which goes into the hands of criminals. They have to explore even market mechanisms to see if that can allow the flow ofmoney to reduce.

"If they want to take all the drugs they want, as far as I’m concerned let them take them. I don’t agree with it but it’s their decision, as consumers and as a society. What I do not accept is that they continue passing their money to the hands of killers."

Read this short article with Mexico's President opinion about drug trade here: DrugTradeMexico

O2 #1 The Money-Empathy Gap (via NYMAG)

New research suggests that more money makes people act less human. Or at least less humane.

In a windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two undergrads are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luck—those ingredients that ineffably combine to create success in games as in life—have been made immaterial. Here, the only thing that matters is money.  

One of the players, a brown-haired guy in a striped T-shirt, has been made “rich.” He got $2,000 from the Monopoly bank at the start of the game and receives $200 each time he passes Go. The second player, a chubby young man in glasses, is comparatively impoverished. He was given $1,000 at the start and collects $100 for passing Go. T-Shirt can roll two dice, but Glasses can only roll one, limiting how fast he can advance. The students play for fifteen minutes under the watchful eye of two video cameras, while down the hall in another windowless room, the researchers huddle around a computer screen, later recording in a giant spreadsheet the subjects’ every facial twitch and hand gesture.  














































































































































































































































































































































































































Read the rest of this extensive article about money & empathy here: MoneyEmpathyGap