I keep the local police department and fire department non-emergency phone numbers programmed into my phone. It's pretty easy to remember 9-1-1 in an emergency, but for little things, I find it pays to keep those numbers handy, because for something small and insignificant, I'm going to have to overcome a lot of inertia to track them down.

A few months ago I was walking down the street and came across a trash can that was smoldering. Not an emergency. I called the police department and let them know about it, then flagged down the truck when it arrived. That kind of thing.

Smart phones will probably solve this problem for us, sooner or later. There will be an app you can install that will automatically pull up the local police and fire departments for you, automatically, wherever you happen to be at that moment. But the number of people with smart phones is still pretty small, so I tried to think of a way to spread them in a community that didn't involve a mobile app.

My conclusion is to use a simple meme: a business card. Print a few hundred that read "Put these numbers in your phone, then pass this along to a friend", and it lists the local numbers. Spread them around and encourage people to pass them forward.

I might actually do this. Can anyone out there think of a better solution than the one I just proposed?