Author Archives: Robert Basil

Your title is verbose.

An example of editing.

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged | Leave a comment

Yelling at your editor

In earlier writing here on mentorship, I noted that you do not have to actually like your mentors to have a fruitful relationship with them. In one post, “Mentorship without Friendship,” I wrote: “A mentor sees in her or his … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Copyright laws have always been a real bear

Ted Goia’s Substack newsletter is enlightening – with truly startling frequency – about things I probably should have known about already. From yesterday’s post: The most extreme case of music copyright comes from Elizabethan England. Here the Queen gave William … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Rethinking is thinking.

That’s my motto as the summer semester starts (orientations today). There will be a million more of these articles:

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Prompt Engineering”

Even before my friend Chet fully explained to me what this term meant, I was on board with it. From Forbes the other day: The democratization of Artificial Intelligence and, specifically, the generative models boom seems to have changed everything. … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Be fair and be good to the artists

Artist and writer Molly Crabapple, whose work I have long admired, has written an open letter “imploring publishers to restrict their use of A.I.-generated illustrations.” I signed. Since the earliest days of print journalism, illustration has been used to elucidate … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged | Leave a comment

Everything will be suspicious

Longtime NoContest.ca friend Chet Wisniewski has “Three Cybercrime Predictions in the Age of ChatGPT.” I don’t know anyone who writes more clearly and helpfully on these things. Organizations (like my own) have trained their employees to recognize phishing and other … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged | Leave a comment

Best answer yet to that question

By rocker Susanna Hoffs: It’s worth it for me to remember that, because I am a bit of a snob formalist when it comes to evaluating published writing (prose or verse). The NYTimes “By the Book” series is always fun, … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

New at No Contest

We have added two news-feeds, for Artificial Intelligence and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), to go with our feeds on Social Media Policy and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and we’ve significantly expanded our resources list at the top of the page. … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged | Leave a comment

Phonics and the State of the Union

Our friend Jonathan Mayhew has been wondering whether the “balanced literacy” approach to teaching reading has neglected fundamental ways the brain apprehends and organizes sound itself, to the detriment of a generation or more of young would-be readers. Professors of … Continue reading

Posted in Robert's posts | Tagged , , | Leave a comment