Man killed in Oven, company being sued

Jose Melena, 62, was performing maintenance in a 35 foot long oven when he was killed back in 2012. A co-worker who believed that Melena was in the bathroom, filled the oven with 12,000 pounds of Tuna and then continued to turn on the oven. A supervisor noticed that Melena was gone so an announcement was made over the intercom and employees searched for him throughout the facility and parking lot. Melena was found two hours later after the pressure cooker was turned off. The pressure cooker had reached a max of 270F. Plant Operations Director Angel Rodriguez and safety manager Saul Florez were both charged with 3 counts of violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules which put them in a position where they face up to three years in prison and fines up to $250,000 if convicted of all charges. The company where these employees work, Bumble Bee, are not pleased with the outcome of these decisions. “We remain devastated by the loss of our colleague Jose Melena in the tragic accident,” Bumble Bee said. “We disagree with and are disappointed by the charges filed by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.”

To me it is tough, because I feel that any way you view it the company is going to come out looking wrong here. A man died because of careless mistake. But, it was still a mistake, which can happen any where and at any time. If the company is going to go in any direction it should be one that stresses this. I think they should have gone this way as opposed to the we’re not in agreement route. It would have been a much better decision because they could have admitted that they were in the wrong and asked for leniency. I don’t know how far off the safety and health regulation rules the employees were, but I think three years is excessive. This all depends on if the rules were completely ignored or not, but I don’t know if I would have the two charged go to jail for more than months, if at all. That’s not to say there should not be some type of punishment. I think they should both be fired and possibly fined to some degree, but that’s it. What do you think? Did Bumble Bee make the right decision? Was the punishment for the employees too harsh? Comment below to discuss your thoughts.

NFL Standout Player Retires After Rookie Season

A top NFL rookie last year has announced he’s retiring after just one season. The reason? He is concerned about the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma. Chris Borland, who played for the San Francisco 49ers, is only 24 years old. Borland recorded 107 tackles with a sack and two interceptions in 14 games. He talked to people close to him, as well as consulted concussion specialist and came up with this difficult decision. I can see people criticizing him and complaining that he isn’t “tough” enough, but in my mind it is a personal choice that might not be a bad idea. I initially thought, well if you made it to the NFL then you have most likely been playing football for the better portion of your life, and therefore should have quit before making it to the league. Quickly thinking about it, I realized that the NFL is a whole different entity.

The players are bigger, faster, stronger, and definitely hit harder. You can go to YouTube and easily find 30 clips from the last couple seasons of guys getting destroyed by tackles. Obviously, that can’t be good for your health. There have been ongoing studies and lawsuits against the NFL because numerous players have come forward with different issues which are related to head injuries. Borland is not currently feeling any symptoms. “I feel largerly the same, as sharp as I’ve ever been. For me, it’s wanting to be proactive”. He just has concerns and doesn’t want to end up with head trauma. “I’m concerned that if you wait till you have symptoms, it’s too late.” That is, at least to me, a very understandable reason for hanging it up.

He made a decision that he felt was logical, and that would benefit him in the long run. I wonder if more NFL players will follow suit and decide to retire themselves. There has already been 4 players over the last week who have retired ranging in age from 24-30, which is young for the sport. I expect more players with similar concerns to at least heavily weigh their options as far as how long they play. I can’t say myself what needs to be done, but clearly many players and people believe there needs to be some type of action put in place.

Flying Car coming our way in 2017?

” The Roadster”…travel just became easier, if you’ve got the money

AeroMobil demonstrated their flying car back in October of 2014. It was called the AeroMobil 3.0. Now, the company announced at South By Southwest 2015 that their goal is to have the grounded/flight vehicle ready as soon as 2017. The price of the vehicle, as to be expected is expensive. But, maybe not as expensive as some might think. The price would be several hundred thousand dollars. I honestly thought that something like this would instantly be in the mid to high millions. As if this surprising development wasn’t enough, AeroMobil announced they are moving on to self-flying cars. That worries me a bit, as I have never seen the first version in action where a person is flying and now they suggest they are looking ahead/moving forward. It just seems like this is happening way too fast, but I guess that is how technology is nowadays. Reading further into the article the tester already have top speeds for the vehicle set at 99 miles on the ground and 124 miles in the air. Juraj Vaculik, AeroMobil’s co-founder and CEO, says that “the Roadster” uses 650 feet to take off and only needs 160 feet to land. Although it does have to be in an even grass field, it’s suggested that there could be something created where drivers, or should I say fliers, could merge onto the highway. As cool as this all sounds, I think a lot of problems would ensue right away. First, I think that there would be a large number of accidents due to the change from air to ground. Obviously, just like people get their driver’s license, I’m sure that they would put something into place for flight as well. Another thing would be the cost of this revolutionary idea. We are already in debt as a nation, so to restructure what would be a large scale project, both time wise and financial, just doesn’t seem very feasible to me right now. Don’t get me wrong I want this to happen. I just don’t think this is the time for it. This is still all speculation on what could happen if these vehicles came out. Either way, I don’t expect to be driving or flying one anytime close to soon. Are we prepared for this? Would you be one of the first ones to ride around in this, with others flying around you?

Here is the link to the article:http://www.popsci.com/sxsw-2015-forget-self-driving-cars-future-self-flying-cars

Also take a look at the flying vehicle video on youtube here:https://youtu.be/kzYb68qXpD0

Peter Hooley hits winning shot to send team into NCAA tournament, was it meant to be?

Peter Hooley, a D1 basketball player for the Albany Great Danes, made the team’s only 3 point shot in spectacular fashion to win the American East Conference and give his team a spot in the NCAA tournament. But the bigger story is what this meant to Hooley. Hooley’s mother passed away in January due to colon cancer, which caused Hooley to miss 8 games during the regular season as he returned home to Australia to be with his family. Over that stretch, the team only lost 1 game in his absence. That was a big deal for Albany since Hooley was Albany’s leading scorer. I think his teammates probably dedicated their effort during that stretch for Hooley, as I’m sure they knew about his mother’s passing. After Hooley returned the team went on to win 19 of its last 20 games and have an overall record of 24-8 heading into the tournament. They will face Oklahoma this Friday as part of the 2nd round of games.

This is such an inspirational story that I felt that it was necessary to blog about. His sister, who was watching all the way in Australia, was tweeting about the shot her brother hit. “Mum was with you Pete!!!!! Tears all over this house”. She went on to say how their mom was watching over him as an angel on that shot. I believe in that sort of thing happening. I’m optimistic when it comes to things like this. I do not believe that it was just coincidence that led to him draining the ONLY 3 pointer his team made all game. But hey, some might just call it luck. What do you think? Leave a comment in the section below.

A link to the article and video of the shot is provided here: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/03/albany-peter-hooley-mother-cancer

How PR agencies can build with clients

There is an article called “11 social media principles to guide PR agencies” that lists tips for more success with clients and social media. It goes into detail about communicating with the client that they need to effectively reach and communicate with an audience instead of just talking at them. Listening is also key. In this case, listening to your client and their needs and wants is very important. You first want to know your client’s vision for their social media campaign. Talking too much can lead to the client leaving you. These seemed like the more common sense PR principles, even though at times they are overlooked by people in the industry.

Social media is becoming a large part of PR, with many clients trying to reach their audience

Then came the more informative principles. Ones like practice what you preach, use less isolated tactics and more integrated strategy, and not being vague on social media. Practice what you preach is pretty obvious as far as what it means. As an agency you have to make sure that you are not just throwing out ideas to the client, but are giving them things that you have once implemented with another company or with your agency itself. Using less isolated tactics means that you have to not only post to Facebook or some other social media site. As an agency you must tie in several social avenues to create an overall campaign instead of it just being one-sided. The last I’ll mention and to me the most important of all the PR principles is to not be too vague with the language you use. Make what you say concise and descriptive so that everyone interested should be able to follow what you are saying. You do not simply want to post something that can be left up to many different interpretations, unless that is what you are specifically going for. For the client, they need to clearly display  the message that they are trying to present, while the audience needs to quickly understand the message so that they can easily respond.

Expect more Apologies from Apple

Apple Servers go down, likely to continue?

Apple recently had some of its notable services experience issues. Apps as big as iTunes, iCloud, and the Mac App Store, had parts of their services down for 12 hours that started yesterday at 5 a.m. The company issued an apology stating that it was due to an internal DNS error at Apple. Apple is working to get their services up and running again as quickly as possible. From a PR standpoint, I believe that Apple could have been a little bit more specific. Their loyal fan base will still continue to use their products and commit further money to Apple  regardless, but they could have given more details toward what the problem was. Daniel Ernst, a Hudson Square Research analyst, believes that similar difficulties will occur with the rise of online use in iCloud. “I think that we’ll see more and more of this across the industry as we become more dependent on the cloud, but I don’t think it’s going to have a material impact”. Even though there will not be major problems that occur from this increased usage, there will be several minor bumps along the way. It could possibly be enough of a problem that I would want a clear explanation as a customer. What do you think, should Apple better explain their service difficulties instead of just apologizing?

Time magazine has horns on Hillary Clinton?

  TIME magazine March 23,2015 issue

Time magazine’s March 23rd issue will feature a silhouette of Hillary Clinton which “appears” to have horns placed directly above her head. The horns are actually part of the M in TIME. To me, it doesn’t resemble horns or anything of that nature. This is a simple case of people trying to start a controversial topic over nothing. Granted, there are times where there are things that are situated in a poor manner or done distastefully, but this is not one of those times. Time magazine has taken some negative backfire from having other people on their cover of the magazine where it appears to have them with horns as well. A notable one is with the Pope, pictured below.

This was one I feel that they could have rearranged somehow so that the Pope was not directly under the M. Not that I have a huge problem with it, I just think it could have been situated differently so that they would not draw negativity. But, who knows, maybe that was part of their aim. Time may have wanted to draw attention, negative or positive, as long as people were discussing their magazine. The cover with Hillary Clinton however, became news because someone had nothing else to write about and so they put this story together. I guess it just reverts back to the viewer’s belief of whether or not they see horns when they look at the cover. It’s up to you to decide.

Dove’s #SpeakBeautiful campaign

The Dove campaign has come up with this hash tag SpeakBeautiful which is not a problem. The weird part of it is when they are commenting on all these different tweets that people put up. Some people may be happy that a brand is commenting on their tweets, but I think for most of us we would find it a little invasive, since the people with the initial tweets were not even using the hash tag. The reply tweets by Dove sort of come off as creepy. It would be one thing to have people tweet using the hash tag or Dove’s profile page, but Dove is seeking people out instead. It would be better for them to restructure this campaign to make it less invasive and more about them supporting women.

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