The Big Move
Emptying the nest all the way out When I cradled my newborn son, Zachary, in a daze in Beijing in 2008, the idea of him as a young man seemed as remote as the planet Neptune. Babies are all-consuming in Continue reading
Imagethief
An Asia hand returns to Silicon Valley a stranger in a strange land
Latest posts
Black or White
How hard should we cancel the Michael Jackson biopic? I was in high school in 1982 when Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out. Those were the days of national monoculture, and that album was the aural equivalent of chewing gum on your shoe. Continue reading
French Harder!
An air crash, the politics of language and the dangers of unresolved tension Let’s say you’re the CEO of a national air carrier. It’s a big job that comes with lots of pressure! One of your aircraft is involved in a Continue reading
The Predictable Prediction Crisis
The risks of being able to bet on anything, anytime One of the things that makes a good crisis comms person is being able to imagine bad situations. The benefit is that you can envision possible scenarios and plan accordingly. Continue reading
The People v. McRib
The press bites on a sandwich lawsuit Here’s a possibly controversial theory: Lawyers are just specialized PR people. I can hear my lawyer friends clenching their jaws, but hear me out. Contracts are communication. Courtrooms and arbitration hearings are communication. Continue reading
Rocketship to Planet Urologist
Getting older, one awkward gland at a time It’s been getting harder to pee. It’s not that I can’t pee. That would be time to rush for the emergency room and get catheterized, something that (so far) I have not Continue reading
The Kiss-Cam of Resurrection
Born Anew in the New York Times Remember the Coldplay concert kiss-cam disaster of last July? The CEO of software company Astronomer, Andy Byron, and the head of human resources, Kristin Cabot, were caught in a suggestive embrace by the Continue reading
Ward 86: Growing Up in the Time of AIDS
My father’s memoir of the terrible epidemic of the 1980s My parents separated in 1973, when I was six years old. I sometimes think the amazing thing is that they got together in the first place. They are very different Continue reading
In Space, No One Can Hear You Spin
Crisis PR for science fiction’s most evil company Note: Minor spoilers for the recent “Alien: Earth” series. I was eleven in 1979 when my dad took me to see Ridley Scott’s Alien at the Geneva Drive-In, in South San Francisco. I watched Continue reading
Triumph of the Wankers
Stadium Concerts and the Iconography of Totalitarianism I am going to start with something polarizing. I like the band Oasis. When people who don’t like Oasis find out that you do like Oasis, they will often try an intervention, like Continue reading