Tag Archives: courtesy

The angry period. When texting.

Writes Clair Landsbaum in complex.com: It’s much easier to be aggressive over text because you’re not face-to-face with the person you’re talking to, and people are finding new ways to express that aggression via the humble period. A new study … Continue reading

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Independent Creativity: Making Yourself Successful

The wonderful Molly Crabapple explains what she has learned, in fifteen paragraphs. Here are a half dozen: Companies are not loyal to you. Please never believe a company has your back. They are amoral by design and will discard you at a … Continue reading

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The Work of Molly Crabapple

Molly Crabapple‘s only peer as an illustrator / artist / journalist is the great Joe Sacco. The tone of their work is very different, though. Whereas Sacco’s reporting is dispassionate and ironic, Crabapple’s is emotional and argumentative. Sacco’s art – black … Continue reading

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“The Franklin Effect”

Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography, “Enemies who do you one favor will want to do more.” He illustrated the maxim with a story: A political adversary had been lambasting Franklin in public speeches. Franklin knew that this person was very proud … Continue reading

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A Generation of Mentors

It’s hard for me to re-read KPMG‘s October report “BC Junior Mining at a Crossroads,” commissioned by the BC Securities Commission, without feeling not just loss but what will be lost. The report’s findings echo the lamentations of my friends … Continue reading

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The Art of Scolding

In 1987 I promoted a story about “Secular Organizations for Sobriety” [SOS] that appeared in the Buffalo News. SOS was one of those secular humanist initiatives promulgated by Paul Kurtz’s publishing enterprises out of Buffalo, in this case “Free Inquiry,” … Continue reading

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It’s Usually Not Mother’s Day

Are there any people other than mothers who ever truly know that they have been the most important person in the life of someone else? I like this question, and ask some variant of it in most of my professional … Continue reading

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Complex Communications Solutions vs. Perhaps a Simpler One

From Paul Constant in The Stranger today: Chris DeRose published an article at Business Insider addressing the fact that McDonald’s is failing at customer service, with a vice president of the company openly talking about the “rude or unprofessional employees” … Continue reading

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To thank or not to thank on Twitter?

Nick Bilton’s suggestion that e-mail thank-yous are a time waster has sparked debate on whether or not it’s appropriate to thank people in digital communications. Some have gone so far to suggest that this new social ethic of efficiency is creating … Continue reading

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Stopping the Page from Being Blank

In the mid-1990s, shortly after I moved to Vancouver, I got a job doing Investor Relations for a public company drafting news releases, presentations, brochures, and the like. I would put drafts of these items together and present them to … Continue reading

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