Category Archives: Robert’s posts

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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The Cannabis Curriculum

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Robert Basil

From my visionary university.

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“The Personal Essay”

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Robert Basil

From the wonderful Atrios: Generally, when any part of education rewards students for being confessional, you are going to attract/reward students who are comfortable with the genre of personal confession. It’s a weird thing to ask of students, and a weird … Continue reading →

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10% and “the crisis in knowledge”

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Robert Basil

Writes Jonathan Mayhew: Knowledge is under attack from several fronts at once. In science itself, it is due to corporate corruption and the inherent bias toward interesting but possibly false results. There was that paper about how most scientific findings are false.  … Continue reading →

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“Pedagogy of Delinquency”

Posted on October 2, 2018 by Robert Basil

From my friend Clarissa: There are several foundational principles to the pedagogy of delinquency. Respect. These are kids who value respect like nothing else in the world because it’s so rare in their world. Respect yourself, respect them, and accept … Continue reading →

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