There has been some recent controversy about whether the Canadian government got their money’s worth when they spent an estimated $56,000 to have Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stamp the final Canadian penny produced for circulation. It was staged as a publicity stunt in May at the Royal Canadian mint in Winnipeg with accompanying press conference.… Read More: Did the Federal Government Get Its Penny Worth? »
Toronto should offer thanks, maybe a statue, to the one man who has made this city into the world class city it has become. When I was a kid, Toronto was a weak number two city in Canada. Montreal was the most important city with Vancouver a distant number three. Head offices were in Montreal. Everyone… Read More: Toronto Should Thank Its Most Supportive Politician »
I had to phone to complain about a charge from my telecom solutions provider. I don’t know when they became a solutions provider instead of a telephone company. Here is what happened, and why I think that a lot of companies are training their customers to be jerks. The bigger the jerk customers become, the… Read More: Are Companies Training Customers to be Jerks? »
Hello Berlitz! Hello Rosetta Stone! Het, Duolingo! You think we want to speak Mandarin fluently in 30 days – HAH! What we really want to know is the difference between “hashi” and “gohan” in a Japanese restaurant. What is a glass of “palinka”? What the heck is “chupe de camarones”? Should I order the “murgh cholay”… Read More: A Case for the Berlitz School of Menu »
I once gave a class presentation about the psychology used in advertising that leads people to deceive themselves. I outlined some of the techniques to our class of about twenty or so. At the end of the class, a number of students said they did not believe me. They said they could never be fooled… Read More: Hey Nineteen – How Psychological Bias Works »
One minute I was playing squash with my friend Alan, the next minute I was totally in the dark. I could see nothing. Just blackness. Nothing. What happened? The weird thing was that Alan saw the same thing. We had been playing squash on the fifth floor of a club in New York City on… Read More: When You Are Totally in the Dark »
The Creative strategy for Camay bar soap in Venezuela was that it was gentle, leaving skin feeling soft because Camay contained cold cream. Softness was the end benefit of using the product, being caressable was what we called the end-end benefit, a social benefit to a physical one. The commercials were designed to empower the… Read More: We Leave You Caressable »
As Super Bowls, Stanley Cups and other championships roll around, it is interesting to see so many people wearing the jerseys or replicant jerseys of their favourite teams and players. It is a new thing. Even putting names on the backs of jerseys is a relatively new thing and not all teams even add them.… Read More: Wearing the New Jersey »
My grandmother would be more than 125 years old today. She was born in a country that didn’t exist when she was born. Now it is called Belarus. English was her third or fourth language. I don’t know if she spoke any of them well, but she got her message across. She died before smartphones were… Read More: My Grandmother Taught Me To Read AI Corrected Text Messages »
When you watch a football game, you see officials watching the runners being tackled or run out of bounds. These officials then run out, grab the ball and place it on the field when they estimate it was advanced to. It is a field of 100 (US) or 110 (Canadian) yards, and the placement is… Read More: Rough Guesses That We Measure Microscopically »