Event: Siege of Iranian Embassy, LondonDate: 30 April 1980Summary: Six armed men stormed the embassy, taking 29 hostages and making various demands on the new Khomeini government. Police responded to an alarm, they knocked on the door and the head terrorist told them to go away. Crowds of Iranians arrived and began chanting support for
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Blog Grid | Allan Bonner Communications Management Inc. - Part 3
Date: 1 June 1974 Summary: Chemical engineers predominated in a facility that occasionally needed mechanical-engineering expertise. Some repairs had been made, including using ‘dog-leg’ pipe and substituting pipe with a smaller diameter, which had caused increased pressure. The manufacturing-process included heating gasoline. A vapour cloud ignited, causing an explosion—one of the largest petrochemical-plant explosions in
27 Jul
A Case Study: The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion, 19,000 feet up, Cape Canaveral, Florida
Date: 28 January 1986 Summary: The problem with the flight became evident at seventy seconds after lift-off, right after the ‘throttle-up’ exchange between mission control in Houston and Commander Richard Scobee. NASA scheduled press briefings and then postponed. One official said it had been a good weather day (despite the icicles seen on the spacecraft
Event: TWA 800 Crash, Long Island, New YorkDate: 17 July 1996Summary: About twenty minutes after takeoff, at about 14,000 feet, the Boeing 747 crashed into the water. The plane had spent double its projected lifespan— 10 years—in the air. TWA and the plane had a good safety record. Some investigators settled on terrorism as the
An egalitarian trend in the media is to add the perspectives of ordinary people who don’t actually have perspectives “Know it alls” and the “right people” in fashionable suburbs in my parents’ generation referred to television as the “boob tube.” Others referred to the “idiot box.” Parents denounced rock and roll radio but without the
Question Period, after all, is an essential tool for political accountability It’s not called ‘answer period,’” say many political aides. Their advice to cabinet members is that s/he then doesn’t have to answer a question in Question Period. They add a smirk showing they’ve revealed something naughty and know it. This comment is usually injected
Event: Volcanic Eruption, Krakatoa, Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java Date: 27 August 1883 Summary Thought to be extinct, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted with such force that it caused a 120-foot tidal wave. Five cubic miles of rocks flew 17 miles in the air. The shockwaves circled the earth seven times.
10 May
The Printed Word
What’s a print journalist like? That’s like asking what’s a politician like. The answer depends. There are beat reporters who only cover politics, general reporters who do sometimes, business reporters, columnists, editors and many others who put together a newspaper or magazine. A print interview might involve an hour with an editorial board or a
03 May
Giving Good Clip
I went into the media training business about 20 years ago because I had interviewed plenty of politicians who seemed to have no clear position. They didn’t seem to be up on their files. They seemed guilty of something. In those days, there were a lot of misconceptions about how to deal with reporters—ask questions
Event: 9/11, World Trade Center, New York City Date: 11 September 2001 Summary The terrorist group al-Qaeda coordinated suicide attacks on the US. They hijacked four airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center Towers, another into the Pentagon and a fourth (probably destined for the White House or the Capitol) near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Some
Date: 23-30 August, 2005 Summary: The storm began over the Bahamas, strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico, then weakened before hitting land for the second time on the morning of August 29. The worst damage in New Orleans occurred when the levee system failed, with many failures after the hurricane had moved inland. Eighty per
For example, you can no longer simply call your lawyer to set up a one-minute meeting. It now requires an exchange of emails In the olden days, lawyers had a schedule of service charges, as garages do. A will was so many dollars and so was a muffler. Simple. Then the accountants got a hold
25 Mar
Mastering your Voice
Your voice can radically affect your personal image as well as the impact of your text. Constant use of the telephone and voice mail makes your vocal quality more important than ever before. Even if you rarely make a speech or presentation, once you master your voice’s abilities, you can achieve your full potential. Speakers
There are workarounds in technology that are just as funny as any Goldberg cartoon What a Rube Goldberg! American cartoonist Rube Goldberg invented chain reaction – machines intended to perform a simple task in a complicated and nearly impossible way. You’ve seen a version on TV – hundreds of falling dominos pushing the next one over, releasing
Propeller-head tech types may be enamoured with convergence, but it is failing to fill the needs of real people Convergence is a happy word, it seems. The dictionary says convergence signifies moving forward. Convergence can also mean the co-ordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on
On February 6th, 2023, Turkey and Syria experienced a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, killing tens of thousands of people. It is a reminder to prepare ourselves for any disasters that could come our way.
Closing the deal has become secondary to establishing your account and following the proper procedures There are 500,000 procurement officers in North America. It’s obvious they were not procuring before and during the pandemic. Yet procurement officers have professional (sic) bodies, co-procurement agreements, hold conferences in sunny spots in the winter, and so on. Sales
25 Jan
Aspirational
Many personal coaches and therapists try to get their clients to stop using the “woulda, shoulda, coulda…” terminology. We can all get a little down by focussing on what we would have done, should have done, and could have done, had life unfolded differently.
Political parties’ fixation on analytics poses a threat to your personal information In the olden days, there were lots of ways to disrupt elections. In at least one Canadian jurisdiction, gifts would be waiting for you outside the polling place. That’s disruption. One of the first national elections I covered was in the days when
10 Jan
Auckland
Auckland’s Emergency Management Group Plan is a wake-up call for the rest of the world. In my study of 100 urban emergency plans from the top English-speaking cities in the world, none face up to lack of preparedness the way Auckland does. Auckland’s plan notes that only about 7% of its residents are prepared for