Category: Business

National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

By , on December 6, 2010

Today is National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which also com­mem­o­rates the anniver­sary of the Montréal Massacre in 1989. I am hon­oured to have been asked to read one of my poems at the Toronto Candlelight Vigil to mark the anniver­sary of this tragic event.

The fact is that vio­lence against women is an everyday reality for mil­lions of girls and women around the world. There are many kinds of vio­lence. The word “vio­lence” is related to the word “vio­la­tion” – and each time a woman’s right to be a full, self-determining human being is vio­lated because she is a woman, vio­lence against women is com­mitted. From media and adver­tising depic­tions of women as vapid damsels in dis­tress worthy of little more than objec­ti­fi­ca­tion for men’s plea­sure, to domestic abuse, work­place sexual harass­ment, date rape, mar­ital rape, the misogyny of reli­gious fun­da­men­talisms, and sexual assault and gender-based vio­lence, women, girls and trans people are still much more likely to be at the receiving end of vio­lence and vio­la­tion. These prob­lems are usu­ally worse for women who are not white, not from the upper-middle classes, and those of us who straddle mul­tiple social-cultural iden­ti­ties as immi­grants and chil­dren of immi­grants. Continue reading ‘National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women’»

Economics 101

By , on May 8, 2008

My dad for­warded me this pic that just says it all…

Evolve or Die

By , on April 1, 2008

Journalist Mark Glaser has an article up on the pbs.org MediaShift blog about the changing face of media in the 21st cen­tury. He talks about how both tra­di­tional media and new media must learn from each other, and merge the best prac­tices. I like the point he makes about the techno-genie… once it’s out of the bottle, no one can put it back in. We’ve seen the same phe­nomena with all tech­no­log­ical break­throughs: TV, radio, Film, Nuclear weapons, cell phones, you name it.

No longer do people rely on TV Guide to pro­gram their lives around their favorite TV shows. Now they can use a dig­ital video recorder or watch shows on-demand online and fit their TV watching into their lives. The people are taking con­trol and watching, and lis­tening to what they want when they want — and on the devices they want. And that goes for TV as well as radio and audio, with pod­casts allowing people to listen on their own time and fast-forward or rewind shows at will.

What do we gain? We get more con­trol of our lives and our media expe­ri­ence and we are no longer slaves to pro­gram­mers. But what do we lose? We are losing shared expe­ri­ences, where we all watch the same shows at the same time, or watch the same sporting events together. And our “water cooler” talk has a new eti­quette, where we must tell people not to ruin our favorite shows because we’re taping it to watch later!

& how they do it">Ads — What they do & how they do it

By , on January 18, 2008

A couple of excel­lent arti­cles from Business Week: 1 about how ads push your but­tons, and another about how ads are changing in the face of the new media evolving in front of us:

This Is Your Brain On Ads

Advertising: Now a Conversation

How Britney struggles on $350,000 a month

By , on November 2, 2007

Oh the trou­bles of the rich and nar­cis­sistic….

$49,267 mort­gages
$16,000 clothes
$102,000 enter­tain­ment, gifts and vaca­tions
$4,758 dining out
$35,000 for child and spousal sup­port
$ 0savings and invest­ments (all fig­ures monthly spending)

Quick some­body tell Chris Crocker!

USD = CAD for the 1st time in 31 years">USD = CAD for the 1st time in 31 years

By , on September 20, 2007

Most people saw this coming years ago.

At 10:59 a.m., a cheer went up on trading room floor

Is that in Canadian or American dol­lars?
“It didn’t really matter,” Mr. Feig says with a laugh. “It’s the same price either way.”

Corporate B.S. Generator!

By , on May 20, 2007

The Corporate Bullshit Generator is a must-have for anyone who has ever worked or will ever work in or around cubicles.

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