Comcast owes me an hour. As in, 60 or so minutes of my life that I’ll never get back because of their phalanx of … poorly trained customer service people. When I moved to Seattle I did all I could to take advantage of their “easy transfer of service” promise. Things started going wrong when I called them a week
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The original plan when we began this project was to offer the amendments individually, invite discussion, then produce a final document. The course of the process, though, has made a couple things clear. First, there needs to be a period to discuss the entire document in context, and second, while the original “Bill of Rights” approach perhaps had a certain
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Via our boy Dr. Jim Booth: BuzzFeed last week presented “11 Things The North Carolina Legislature Gave Us This Session.” The list isn’t pretty. It includes: Moral Mondays Harsh abortion restrictions hidden in a motorcycle bill The most restrictive Voter ID laws in the country The decimation of public education as North Carolinians know it The assumption that all those
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The Susan Komen Foundation announced this past week that it’s slashing the number of cancer walks it stages in half. In a decision “not made lightly,” the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure announced Wednesday that it was canceling seven of its signature three-day fundraising walks next year. The decision comes about 18 months after the organization stoked considerable
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There’s a petition making the rounds on Facebook. The short version is that Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing is suing Lexington, KY-based West Sixth Brewing for trademark infringement. West Sixth is asking the good citizens of Facebook to help them back Magic Hat off. You can read the post here, and it nicely explains the kerfuffle from West Sixth’s perspective. Have
Read morePart two of a series. Ricky Bobby is not a thinker…He is a doer. – Talladega Nights In part one of this series, we talked about a new analysis that explains how important stupidity is to the modern corporation. Today we’re going to have a look at what this means for you. In short, despite what you’ve been told your
Read morePart one of a series. Phil Rizzuto: “Hey Yogi I think we’re lost.” Yogi Berra: “Yeah, but we’re making great time!” You know how certain segments of society think that governments and universities and public school systems ought to be “run like businesses”? And how those same people bitch at length about how messed up their companies are and by
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I recently came across a useful article over at Ragan’s PR Daily entitled “What to wear to work in the PR and marketing industry.” After reading through it, my first reaction was that it was mistitled – what it offers is good advice for what to wear to work in just about any industry. From where I sit now, there’s nothing
Read moreIf you haven’t yet seen Mark Hurst’s piece on Google Glass over at Creative Good, you need to. You really, really need to. A lot of times cool new gadget and service roll-outs mainly just affect the manufacturers and the people with the cash to buy them. Sure, there can be collateral damage – World of Warcraft widows, for instance –
Read moreThere’s a new petition going around – maybe you’ve seen it on Facebook. It points up our growing rich-poor gap and asks Congress to cap CEO pay, which is obscene in many cases. The ratio of CEO pay in the United States has ballooned to 380 times that of the average worker. Pass legislation to limit the salary of CEOs
Read moreIn case you haven’t been tracking along, the folks at Maker’s Mark (which is owned by Beam, Inc.), faced with more demand than they could meet, recently announced that they’d be lowering their alcohol by volume (ABV) from 90 proof to 84 proof. You won’t even notice, they assured us. The backlash was swift and loud. Makers Mark customers pitched
Read moreEvery good recipe for deception begins with an ounce of truth. Whoever is managing the current public relations crisis facing the National Rifle Association clearly understands this fundamental principle. In the days since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, the NRA has offered a textbook execution of the crisis communication playbook, employing everything from ducking
Read morePart three in a series. Thanks to expanding TV deals, smart entrepreneurs in the MLS and a Millennial-fueled supporter culture, soccer is the fastest growing spectator sport in the country. There has been a good bit of talk over what pro soccer in the US will do now that Becks has departed the Galaxy. It is a little hard to fathom
Read moreI have a Klout account. If you don’t know about Klout, it’s basically a new, high-tech way of stroking your ego and keeping track of how important you are. And I am all about that. Problem is, I can’t figure out how it works. Oh, I get the basic concept: the more people like and follow and share your stuff on
Read moreBlack Friday is under way – has been since midnight, in fact. In many places around the country, retailers started kicking off the festivities at yesterday: over a quarter of Americans said they planned to go shopping on Thanksgiving. Or, as it will soon come to be known, Black Friday Eve. Or Black Thursday, maybe. Want to hear some fun statistics?
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lullaby pit 