Author Archives: Robert Basil

Hunger in the classroom

Posted on July 14, 2019 by Robert Basil

When I used to teach writing in Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Special Education Teacher Assistant (SETA) program*, on our first day of classes I would tell my students that I possessed nearly none of their ability to infer the emotional or … Continue reading →

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The Arch Obit

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Robert Basil

Obituaries must be charming. When a writer conveys the deceased subject’s wicked faults yet still elicits empathy from the reader, the reader has been charmed into a kind of forgiveness for the dead. When the writer seeks to elicit no … Continue reading →

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Community College

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Robert Basil

I teach at a regional, commuter university, near Vancouver, BC: It has superb programs in traditional academic disciplines as well as in the trades. It enrols both the unusual and the usual suspects as students. Teaching them is a challenge … Continue reading →

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Keep your promises, keep your confidences, and keep your appointments.

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Robert Basil

The prefix para means “beside” or “beyond.” Paralinguistic or paraverbal communication usually refers to *how* one’s words are conveyed: through tone, body language, speaking speed, or even through one’s wardrobe. In both workplace and social environments, though, beside and beyond … Continue reading →

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Media theorist Jay Rosen’s forlorn list

Posted on April 7, 2019 by Robert Basil

A current list of my top problems in pressthink, April 2019. Updated from time to time. Ranked by urgency. 1. Absent some kind of creative intervention, 2020 campaign coverage looks like it will be the same as it ever was. Who’s … Continue reading →

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Stopping the page from being blank …

Posted on April 6, 2019 by Robert Basil

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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Catastrophe

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Robert Basil

I have always considered being a bit of a catastrophist an important part of my mental hygiene. This started in my undergraduate days when I took a lot of classes in probability and statistics. The most important word in the … Continue reading →

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Pretentiousness done right

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Robert Basil

God bless Janet Malcolm. What books are on your nightstand? I take it you mean the imaginary Doric column that supports a teetering pile of current and old books that the interviewee wants to bring to the reader’s attention. My … Continue reading →

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Naked Security

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Robert Basil

The “Naked Security” blogs published by Sophos remind me how vigilant online publishers – and all organizations, really – have to be to protect their content, their data, even their names. Indeed, the word “vigilance” needs to at the top … Continue reading →

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Free at Last

Posted on January 2, 2019 by Robert Basil

United States copyright law was changed repeatedly in the last century to grant copyright extensions to entire classes of works of literature and entertainment. This meant that such work could not be referenced at length in works of scholarship without … Continue reading →

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