Tag Archives: courtesy

L’Esprit D’Escalier

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Robert Basil

Things have changed, if just a little bit, in ten years. From January 2005: I’ve been hearing dialogue everywhere, dialogue that seems to be coming from the same play. At the end of party I went to recently, a woman told … Continue reading →

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Thank you very much

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Robert Basil

The acknowledgments page to B. M. Pietsch’s book Dispensational Modernism is very funny: I blame all of you. Writing this book has been an exercise in sustained suffering. The casual reader may, perhaps, exempt herself from excessive guilt, but for … Continue reading →

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The angry period. When texting.

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Robert Basil

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

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Robert Basil

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

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Robert Basil

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”

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Robert Basil

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

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Robert Basil

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

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Robert Basil

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

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Robert Basil

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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