Writing is really hard. It is one of those things that lots of people claim to be good at but aren’t. Mechanics, style, flow and the inability to express thoughts succinctly are the usual suspects when it comes to crappy prose. Even if you are OK at putting words together,…
In a dictatorship candour is generally absent from public life. This creates situations where the dictator has trouble getting good information about what is actually going on. For example, in the first Gulf War Saddam Hussein had such faulty intelligence re his own military’s capacity that the Iraqis got into…
I just got Jamel Shabazz’s incredible book of photos, Back in the Days. In a nutshell, it documents hip hop and street culture (mostly in NYC) from 1980-1989. The incredibly varied sense of fashion in hip hop culture during the early days is striking. It was not all homogenous the…
Parents agonize over where to send their kids to school. This is especially true if they are spending $10k plus on the price of admission to a private institution. Some private schools seem to get marketing, some don’t. While education is something most people are apt to spend money on,…
Last week somebody asked me about whether they should invest money in putting a press release out via a newswire service. Newswires are REALLY expensive and the lovely folks who run them make you pay for distribution by the word. This is a pretty archaic way of doing things (and…
Since yesterday was so much fun I am back again with installment two of “Shoot that term in the head.” Today’s victim is “this is a critical time.” This unfortunate group of words is often employed by managers who are trying to impart a sense of urgency to their troops….
This post by Julien Smith on the perils of saying “I love you” inspired today’s post, the first in a new video series called “Shoot that term in the head.” In business there are sorts of fucked up and vague terms that people use as ways to obfuscate, betlittle, exploit,…
I had the pleasure of chatting with Aimee Davison (pictured above) of One Hundred Jobs and Fashion Ambush today. So much of the conversation around social media/new PR/marketing 2.0 takes place between industry “experts” so the idea here was to profile someone from outside the industry who “gets it”. Aimee…
Today’s post relates closely to yesterday’s in spirit and maybe even topic. This may mean I am incapable of thinking up new ideas and need to stop blogging now. Anyway, here goes… ———————————————————————————————————————— You may have noticed the happy little fellows in the header of this blog. They are holding…
I ate at a ridiculously dope restaurant called Garde Manger last night. It was my second visit and the first for two of my companions. What struck me as I sampled quail and lobster risotto was that the place, while high end and priced as such, had no pretensions. The…