Author Archives: Robert Basil
Hence, teaching manners matters
In a blog post this morning called “A Raging Snowflake,” my good friend Clarissa writes: Remember the Oppressed Tiffany, a very special snowflake whose “narrative was erased by the entire field of academia” when a hapless prof asked her to … Continue reading
Battle
In the New York Times obituary section recently I came upon one for Jacob Neusner, a scholar (and polemicist) who published more than 900 books in his lifetime. I calculated – on the back of a napkin, as it were – … Continue reading
Real Words
One of the best pure writers I have ever seen was a psychology student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University named Emily (she gave me permission to use her first name). She could amalgamate and compress numerous, complex source articles into a … Continue reading
Good Motto
“I have never sacrificed an idea simply because it might go over the head of someone not yet ready to understand it.”
Satire and Critique
From the very smart libertarian blog “Hit and Run,” presented without comment, except to note that all’s well that ends well (if it does end well): Last Thursday an Ohio jury acquitted Anthony Novak, a 27-year-old man whom Parma police arrested … Continue reading
Brainstorming
Even when participants are not being paid by the hour, meetings are costly: Notwithstanding smart-phones, no one around the table is really doing something else, at least not with an undivided focus. A poorly planned or run meeting wastes everybody’s time, … Continue reading
Rental detectives
I’m pretty much an open book to my building manager. If I ever have to move into another rental, though, the services provided by a British data-mining company might unnerve me. Writes Stanley Q. Woodvine in Vancouver, BC’s Georgia Straight, Tenant Assured is a … Continue reading
The Hootsuite blog
For almost a decade marketers, educators, and students have been using the social media “dashboard” created by Vancouver, BC’s Hootsuite to monitor their social networks, analyze the effectiveness and reach of their messages, “listen” to the many buzzes of the online world, … Continue reading
First Draft News
FirstDraftNews.com is a beautiful and wide-ranging resource created for journalists “who source and report stories from social media.” What is the best way to search for eyewitness media when a story breaks? What are the most efficient and effective ways to … Continue reading
Taking notes
Starting early last year I noticed that students would take photographs of notes I’d written on the board with their smart-phones. What a great idea, I thought – at first. Then I noticed that on some assignments my own on-the-whiteboard language … Continue reading
