Posts Tagged ‘humour’

This fortnight in online insights, we help you converse better, help you get on better with your kids, shine the spotlight on some dangerous journalism and then finish with some dangerous album covers. Enjoy

Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly.

The Positivity Blog is quite a gold mine of timeless articles focussed on helping you tweak important areas of your life. The blog post I have focussed on for this show is one on common conversation mistakes.

It is a worthy read and I encourage you to look at it. Therefore, all I will do for this report is share some choice food for thought.

1 – Not listening. This is the most obvious conversation mistake and the post quotes Ernest Hemingway who once said: “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” The way to deal with this mistake is to check your ego at the door and actually not planning what you will say next but instead doing your utmost to be present and to get inside the story the other person is sharing.

2 – Asking too many questions. This is not as obvious but the point is that asking too many questions can feel like an interrogation. So their solution is to mix questions with statements. This means you actually invest in the conversation while keeping it going. Read the rest of this entry »

This fortnight in Online Insights, we hear about a stoush between an airline and a big man from Hollywood, access some of the world’s greatest minds as well as the world’s worst clients, and learn about whose house to burgle NOW. As always, remember to email me with website suggestions – sd@stevedavis.com.au.

A tale of two plane seats

Kevin's photo sent to Twitter

Movie director, Kevin Smith, is at the centre of a little online storm he created after being ejected off a plane because he was too fat to squeeze into one seat safely. The airline in question is Southwest Airlines in the USA and the story goes that Kevin had bought two tickets for his flight (as he usually does and as the airline policy requires for passenger safety and comfort) but decided to transfer to an earlier flight. Unfortunately, there was only one seat left on the flight and because he could not squeeze into his seat safely, he was asked to leave. So far, one has to say that when they learned there was only one seat available, the airline should have declined to allow him to board, and he should have known that unless he had taken a miracle wonder diet between booking his two seats and electing to try for an earlier flight, he should have stuck with his original flight. However, he decided to try his luck.

Now, I must say, it must be embarrassing to be asked to leave a flight because of your size, and might even trigger some anger as self esteem issues surface and along with feelings of being dealt a bad hand in life. But adding further fuel to this fire, Kevin is one of those minor celebrities from Hollywood who mostly makes the kind of films that are to the world of movies what whoopee cushions are to the world of toys – simply, base, novel, and quickly grown out of. But be that as it may, this thing called Minor Celebrity Syndrome is at play in this story, I believe. MCS works like this. Major celebrities generally have an air of entitlement about them and most people they interact with recognise them and happily kowtow to their needs because they relish sharing stories of having been in so-and-so’s company. They can get stroppy from time to time but it is temporary because the world generally loves them. Minor celebrities, on the other hand, are hardly recognised by anyone at all and so their air of entitlement is often dashed, making them nasty, spiteful and arrogant. Kevin is one of these minor celebs Read the rest of this entry »

In this edition of Online Insights we find a meeting calculator that pulls no punches, get inside information on Fringe events, go where few angels dare to drive, and get all avatar-like.

Avatarise yourself

Steve as Avatar

Every year it seems a new design style enters popular culture. The most recent example was the Obama Hope poster design which spawned the Obama Icon Me website, which we profiled last year on Online Insights. The most recent design craze is related to the movie Avatar. I have seen Avatar-like people and designs popping up all over the place and the latest manifestation to cross my social path is avatarise yourself.

This French website allows you to upload your photo and turn yourself in to one of the avatar characters.

It is easy to use and does a pretty good job. One of the best things about this type of custom image promotional site, is that it actually allows you to download the image and do it all without registering. Read the rest of this entry »

This fortnight on Online Insights we discussed Palm Oil (it will make you gasp and stop eating Tim Tams), Sesame Street’s new site, Morning Glory (not what you think), and a wonderfully quirky site for lifting your mood. Enjoy.

Palm Oil

A selection of products from producers who have certified that they DO contain palm oil or a derivative

So many products we use day to day contain palm oil and most of that palm oil has been obtained by destroying the rainforests of Sumatra and other areas where orang-utans are clinging on for dear life. I have been working with Adelaide Zoo recently and when I heard about this I thought I was doing okay because I couldn’t recall seeing palm oil on ingredient lists for anything I bought. But in fact, for many products that use palm oil – such as well known dish washing liquids and soaps – they do not need to list palm oil, only the “active” ingredients.

There is a double bind with soaps because most producers use either palm oil or beef tallow from slaughter houses. This causes concern for vegetarians trying to live in harmony with their beliefs. For me, it would be hypocritical to object to the beef tallow base because I do eat meat and am glad that very little (if any) of the animals, whose lives we take to sustain our own, go to waste.

So, using products from animals who are already a food source is one thing. Felling trees to make dish washing liquid easy on your hands is another. At the rate things are going, we, as a human race, would have notched up another species kill within ten years or less. Goodnight orang-utans.

But it doesn’t have to end in tears. The Australian Orangutan project has a Facebook group that contains basic information about this situation and, importantly, a discussion board where members update visitors with lists of products that are FREE from palm oil. And we’re not just talking soaps, but biscuits, cosmetics, and a whole range of products use palm oil, most of it plundered from rainforests. It is as absolute disgrace that well loved household names are destroying our closest neighbours in the animal kingdom while smiling at the camera and making supermarket shelves bright and cheery. Every executive at these large soap making and food making conglomerates is living with blood on their hands and they deserve to have their homes and support systems ripped away from them to give them a taste of what they are inflicting on orang-utans, all in a vain chase for some extra lousy bucks. Read the rest of this entry »

Steal Our Ideas

Here’s a novel way for two advertising types, Adam and Jon, to make an impact in their industry. It is a great blog/website. The pair behind this site offer up ideas for advertising campaigns and quirky products for people to freely steal. It is a superb flow of creativity. Here are my favourites:

• The safe fridge magnet – with so many people struggling with weight, they have drawn up a safe fridge magnet that you can stick on your fridge as a reminder that you are breaking in to a treasury of calories that you should think twice about. I like their thought that weight watchers could take the idea and brand up some magnets to give away.
• 

  Great idea that needs stealing

  Love the alternative warning messages on cigarettes – unkissable, this will make me look creative, and no will power. How true!

• They’ve posted a message for Greenpeace to target the 60% of Americans who carry guns – “the more wildlife you save, the more wildlife you can kill”.
• An idea created for careerbuilder.com gives people the chance to Read the rest of this entry »