Proofing pain

When I worked at the Houston office of the Ogilvy ad adgency, we had a full-time proofreader. It was an amazing experience, but they don't fit into most business models. Usually, proofreading is something employees do for one another. 

For small business owners like myself, proofreading is something my customers and prospects do! Painful but true. Have pity. 

Moz: Google-leaked Dos and Don'ts, 2014-Dec-5 by Josh Bachynski

You want to make sure that the spelling and grammar has been checked, that all the pages have been checked for errors, that there are no miscellaneous 500 errors, there are no naked Apache 404 errors. You want to make sure that, essentially, the website has been looked over and proofed. This is, as Google tells us, a direct signal that they're looking for in their quality algorithms. It makes sense because you don't want to see a site that has these kinds of errors on it.

Why the power of relationships drives my work

Lately I've been questioning what it is that I do. Where do I contribute? I know that my passion is in helping businesses build stronger relationships. Too many businesses look for transactions. But transactions, whether of love or commerce, arise because people think they can do something better with you than without you. David Brooks expressed it beautifully when recently talking about the movie Interstellar. 

NY Times Opinion Pages: Love and Gravity, 2014-Nov-20 by David Brooks

Nolan introduces the concept of quantum entanglement. That’s when two particles that have interacted with each other behave as one even though they might be far apart. He then shows how people in love display some of those same features. They react in the same way at the same time to the same things.... 

...People have always bent their worldviews around the latest scientific advances. After Newton, philosophers conceived a clockwork universe. Individuals were seen as cogs in a big machine and could be slotted into vast bureaucratic systems.

But in the era of quantum entanglement and relativity, everything looks emergent and interconnected. Life looks less like a machine and more like endlessly complex patterns of waves and particles. Vast social engineering projects look less promising, because of the complexity, but webs of loving and meaningful relationships can do amazing good.

The dark side of creativity

Some people use their creativity to rationalize dishonesty. Some people feel their creativity justifies immoral behavior. And some people discover that being creative requires them to break the rules.

The Conversation: The dark side of creativity, 2014-Dec-11 by Lynne Vincent

while individuals who self-identify as creative may feel more entitled, it’s possible that this entitlement will cause them to take creative risks