Monday, March 18, 2024

Should both stage fright and speech fright instead be portmanteau words?


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 6, 2022 I blogged about Who popularized the word glossophobia? What is a better Plain English alternative? I suggested ‘speech fright’ would be better. Perhaps even better would be to make it a portmanteau, speechfright. Portmanteau is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:

 

“…a word or part of a word made by combining the spellings and meanings of two or more words or word parts (such as smog from smoke and fog).”

 

Stage fright also can get this treatment - becoming stagefright. Wikipedia says that originally:

 

“A portmanteau is a piece of luggage, usually made of leather and opening into two equal parts.”

 

I’ve illustrated portmanteau by an anonymous version of the Wikimedia Commons image for a famous medical bag.

 


Friday, March 15, 2024

Did you know that yesterday was World Speech Day?


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did not. The About page for World Speech Day says it was started by Simon Gibson in 2015 and that:

 

World Speech Day started with a simple idea: speeches change the world; socially, politically, in the arts, business and religion. They play a profound role in holding our societies together and shaping change. Then why not create a day to celebrate speeches and speechmaking through live public speaking events around the world, reaching out to #unexpectedvouces everywhere?

 

From my Google Alert on public speaking I found an article about it by Shivangani Singh at TheQuintWorld on March 14, 2024 titled World Speech Day 2024: Date, History, Significance & Ways to Participate. You can find out about other holidays in a reference book at your friendly local public library. See this blog post on June 16, 2017 titled What happened in history on June 16th?

 

My cartoon was assembled from images of a globe and a speaker silhouette from Openclipart.

 

 


Thursday, March 14, 2024

Donald J. Trump has seven new false claims


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is another fact check article by Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post on March 14, 2024 titled Trump has a bunch of new false claims. Here’s a guide. Seven new ones are:

 

Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case

The United States is a Third World country

Prisons are being emptied around the world to flood U.S. borders

Congo has released murderers into the United States

15 million migrants have entered the United States under Biden [really 4 to 5 million]

The inflation rate under Biden is 50 percent [cumulatively it is 18.5 percent]

Native-born Americans have lost 1 million jobs to immigrants [it’s half that]

 

And he continues to repeat seven previous ones:

 

He created the greatest U.S. economy in U.S. history (not by any metric).

He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).

He did more for Black people than any president than Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).  

He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).

He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced U.S. tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).

He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (False).

 

My ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ cartoon was assembled from trousers and fire at Openclipart.

 


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Hangar collapse at the Jackson Jet Center beside the Boise Airport


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 31, 2024 workers from Big D Builders were erecting the steel frame for a new hangar at the Jackson Jet Center, which is located beside the Boise Airport at 4049 West Wright Street. The hangar was to be 45 feet tall and cover an area of 39,000 square feet. It was about 310 feet wide by 126 feet deep. But around 5:00 PM it collapsed with the trusses changing to the shape of a capital letter M (as shown above in my image), killing three people and injuring another nine.

 

Some details are discussed in an article by Sally Krutzig in the Idaho Statesman on February 20, 2024 titled Rescue operations at Boise building collapse included 3 people stuck in aerial lifts:

 

“In his review, Boise Fire Department Training and Safety Capt. Steve Madigan wrote that ‘it appeared that the structure somehow failed at the ridge line and caused all the columns to pull inward.’ Initial reports indicated 16 people were at the scene when the building went down, and police and fire crews helped wounded victims who were able to walk leave the area, according to Madigan. The building’s columns ‘were leaning at 45 degrees (approx.) and the bolts securing them to the ground had either sheared off or tore the bottom flange of the steel as they fell,’ Madigan wrote.”

 

Another article by Alex Brizee at the Idaho Statesman on March 6, 2024 is titled ‘Did not look right’: Workers flagged concerns before deadly Boise hangar collapse. It includes an overhead drone shot of the collapsed hangar, which has fallen to one side. That suggests a directional load, perhaps due to wind gusts. The article began by stating:

 

“Several employees who worked at the site of a deadly building collapse on Boise Airport grounds told police they had noticed bending beams, snapped cables and overall structural issues, according to Boise Police Department investigative reports obtained by the Idaho Statesman. Some of these workers informed the site’s supervisor of the concerns the day before the hangar crumbled on Jan. 31, killing three people and injuring nine others. Interviews with employees of Boise-based Inland Crane, which provided equipment and operators for the construction of the Jackson Jet Center hangar, were documented in Boise Police Department reports that were released to the Statesman through a public records request.”

 

Still another article by Angela Palermo at the Idaho Statesman on February 2, 2024 titled Was it wind? How a bridge’s failure may shed light on fatal Boise Airport hangar collapse includes two images of the framing before the collapse.

 

OSHA is investigating the collapse and will issue a report within six months. How an investigation proceeds is discussed in yet another article by Kevin Goudarzi at Structure on

March 2023 titled The forensic engineering process for structural failures. On April 17, 2023 I blogged about A great video course on Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach. In that post I discussed the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, where a design detail change doubled the applied load – eliminating the intended factor of safety.   

 

 


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

A list of ten ‘startling phobias’ that have ‘a strangle hold’ on Idahoans


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a rather silly article by Kyle Matthews at 104.3 Wow Country [KAWO Boise] on March 11, 2024 titled 10 Startling phobias that have a strangle hold on Idahoans. The list is shown above as a bar chart. It’s not from a survey. Rather it’s just a list of how common they were on web searches. (Back on March 7, 2015 I blogged about Is that Top Ten list from a real survey or just a glorified stack of web searches?) The list is clickbait which came from a sports betting web site called BetCarolina, but it is not shown there. Small holes were first, deep water was second, vomiting was third, spiders were fourth, and confined spaces were fifth. Public speaking came in tenth.

 

Kyle’s filler article has the following paragraph which cites public speaking as first (25.3%) for the sum of Afraid and Very Afraid from the 2014 Chapman Survey, which I blogged about in a post on October 29, 2014 titled Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts:

 

“Americans grapple with a diverse range of phobias. Notably, fear of public speaking, also known as Glossophobia, stands out as America's most common phobia, affecting a significant 25.3% of the population. Acrophobia, the fear of heights [24.7%], and Entomophobia, the fear of bugs and insects [animals or insects 22.2%] closely follow this. However, an interesting revelation is that nearly one in three U.S. adults confesses to Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes [not even on that list!]. These fears underline the complexity and diversity of phobias prevalent across the country.”

 

And more careful research instead would have used results from the percent list of fears in the most recent 2023 Chapman Survey.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Kyle’s article confuses fears and phobias, whose difference is shown above in a Venn diagram from my blog post on December 11, 2013 titled Spouting Nonsense: July 2013 Toastmaster magazine article fumbles fears and phobias.

 


Monday, March 11, 2024

Only about 1/15th of registered Republicans voted in their 2024 Idaho caucus

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Clark Corbin at the Idaho Capital Sun on March 8, 2024 titled New bill would reinstate presidential primary election in Idaho. Last year, when the Idaho legislature passed a bill to move the presidential primary from March to May, it eliminated the primary. Democrats and Republicans instead held caucuses. Donald Trump had a huge Republican win with 84.9% versus 13.2% for Nicki Haley.  

 

Another article by Brian Holmes at  KTVB7 on March 8, 2024 is titled Around 6% of registered Republicans took part in Idaho caucus. (More precisely, it was 6.8% or about 1/15th). He pointed out that in 2012, the last time the Republicans held a caucus, 19% had voted.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many Idahoans voted in previous primaries? Yet another article by Clark Corbin in the Idaho Capital Sun on June 13, 2022 is titled Official voter turnout for Idaho’s May 17 primary election comes to 32.5%. Percentages for that and previous primaries are shown above in a bar chart.

 

There is stll another article by Brent Regan at the Gem State Patriot News on March 10, 2024 titled Caucus Saboteurs. He pontificated:

 

“Last Saturday, thanks to efforts by the Idaho Republican Party, nearly 40,000 Idaho Republicans were able to cast their vote for their preferred Presidential Candidate. This could not have happened without the Republican Party acting after the Secretary of State, the legislature and the Governor all agreed to cancel the March Presidential Primary.

 

…. On Saturday all that effort, planning and expense came to together and by 8:00 PM that night, when the last location reported their results, it was obvious that the caucus was a success.”

 

Having just a fifteenth of the registered Republican voters turn up cannot be called a success. Maybe a fifth would be.

 


Saturday, March 9, 2024

What do Caesar Salad, Fried Pickles, and Nachos have in common?

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are told stories that they came from creative improvisations based on desperation.

 

Caesar Salad is named after restaurateur Caesar Cardini. The Wikipedia article says:  

 

“His daughter, Rosa, recounted that her father invented the salad at the Tijuana restaurant when a Fourth of July rush in 1924 depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of table-side tossing by the chef.”

 

And the Fried Pickle may have come from the Hollywood Café, south of Memphis. On a Saturday night the only things left in the kitchen were some batter for frying chicken or catfish -  and a jar of pickles. That story is disputed though.

 

Also, according to another Wikipedia article, Nachos, which have taken over the world:

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“… originated in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico, across the border  from Eagle Pass, Texas in the United States. Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Anaya [shown above] created nachos in 1943 at the restaurant the Victory Club when Mamie Finan and a group of U.S. military officers' wives, whose husbands were stationed at the nearby U.S. Army base Fort Duncan, traveled across the border to eat at the Victory Club. When Anaya was unable to find the cook, he went to the kitchen and spotted freshly fried pieces of corn tortillas. In a moment of culinary inspiration, Anaya cut the tortillas into triangles, fried them, added shredded cheese, quickly heated them, added sliced pickled jalapeno peppers and served them. After tasting the snack, Finan asked what it was called. Anaya responded, "Well, I guess we can just call them ‘Nacho's Special.’ In Spanish, ‘Nacho’ is a common nickname for Ignacio.”  

 

Similarly, Cobb Salad is named after Robert Howard Cobb, the owner of the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant. In 1938 either he or his chef put it together for a midnight meal from kitchen leftovers, with freshly cooked bacon added as a garnish. There is no such thing as leftover bacon!   

 

Images of Caesar Salad and Ignacio Anaya came from Wikimedia Commons.