Author Archives: Robert Basil

Merry Xmas!

Posted on December 25, 2022 by Robert Basil

From the great Bryan Garner: You can buy the new, 5th edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage here.

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This can go a long way

Posted on December 14, 2022 by Robert Basil

This semester I asked a student of mine who’s in my university’s HR program whether human resources professionals needed to actually like people. (I wish I remember why I asked!) She told me nobody had ever asked her that question … Continue reading →

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Christmas season comment

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Robert Basil

I will never get used to the term “anti-woke.”

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Anniversary

Posted on November 12, 2022 by Robert Basil

This month we begin the eleventh year of No Contest Communications. Tierney set the tone and the theme with her inaugural posts. I especially like “On Being Forgiven.”

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Apropos The Georgia Straight

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Robert Basil

Dan Savage was not exaggerating the problems faced by alt-weeklies in recent years. From The Tyee last week: The crew at the Georgia Straight wrote until the bitter end, filing stories and chronicling Vancouver’s culture after the paycheques stopped flowing … Continue reading →

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Savage Love

Posted on October 23, 2022 by Robert Basil

The prose of Dan Savage is bold and crystal clear – and edifying to a profound degree. It always has been. I started reading his column in the San Francisco’s alt-weekly back in the early 90s and kept up that … Continue reading →

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If you hadn’t noticed …

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Robert Basil

Here we go again. — Liberals loathe the political Right’s hypocrisy and unfairness. Conservatives loathe the Left’s immorality and delicacy. The groups’ estimations of their own qualities, though, are less precise. The question of “hypocrisy” is particularly interesting. La Rochefoucauld … Continue reading →

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Looking for new colleagues

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Robert Basil

Kwantlen Polytechnic University is a vibrant and splendid place to work. My own department – Applied Communications (in the Melville School of Business) – is looking for two new instructors. We’re a good crowd. Apply here.

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Job-seekers need their “weaker ties”

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Robert Basil

This is a really interesting study that fortifies an important intuition: A team of researchers from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and LinkedIn recently conducted the largest experimental study to date on the impact of digital job sites on the labor market … Continue reading →

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How to write a lede

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Robert Basil

From the Irish Times: Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to … Continue reading →

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