Fixing misfit ballpoint pens

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week my wife showed me a half-dozen BIC Round Stic Grip ballpoint pens she had a problem with. Normally you can easily pull the cap off before you use one, as shown above. But when she tried to do that instead the 3-7/8” long gray handle came off. These pens provide a lesson about fits and failure in the assembly of products from components.

 

The Wikipedia article about engineering fit says there are three types of fits: clearance, transition, and interference. They can be illustrated using the example of a cylindrical shaft and a hole. The first is a clearance fit where the hole is larger than the shaft so the two parts can slide freely (like the beads on an abacus). A second is a transition fit where the hole is smaller than the shaft and a small force is required to assemble or disassemble (like the caps on most stick pens). The third is an interference fit where a large force is required to assemble or disassemble (like the handle and body on most stick pens).  

 

These pen handles just had a transition fit instead of an interference fit. But I was able to easily fix them by applying a few drops of Super Glue (cyanoacrylate adhesive) to the joint between the body and handle. A single 0.01-ounce tube (from a dollar-store package containing four tubes) got the job done. Tubes on better steel bicycle frames also have a transition fit with their lugs, and then are permanently assembled via brazing.

 

If the dimensions are chosen properly, then an interference fit can be quite strong. Wheels for railroad cars routinely are press-fitted onto their axles. But if dimensions are improper a wheel can loosen, as was described in a 1999 report from the New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission.

 

The Joy of Search, a 2019 book by Daniel M. Russell, is an extremely useful guide about how to do research both online and offline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I borrowed Daniel M. Russell’s 2019 book The Joy of Search (A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the Basics) from my friendly, local public library and greatly enjoyed reading it. His book is a fascinating collection of stories that give you a whole set of tools and a helpful attitude for conducting research. Dan also writes the SearchReSearch blog. There is a web site for the book, and you can download a sample of Chapter 2. You also can look in it online at Google Books. The twenty chapter titles from this book are:

 

 1] Introduction: How You Can Harness the Power of Online Research – Why You Should Improve Your Online Researching Skills

 2] Finding a Mysterious Location Somewhere in the World: How to Use Multiple Information Sources to Zero In on a Resource

 3] Do Lakes in Africa Sometimes Explode? How to Focus Your Search with “site:” and Using Specialized Terms

 4] Things You Notice While Traveling: How and When to Switch Search Modes to Find Information

 5] Is That Plant Poisonous or Not? How to Find Highly Localized and Domain-Specific Information

 6] What’s the Most Likely Way You’ll Die? How to Be Explicit about What You’re Searching to Find (and Why That Matters)

 7] When Would You Want to Read the Italian Wikipedia? How to Look for Information from Other Languages in Wikipedia and Other Sources

 8] Why Are the Coasts So Different? How to Use Online Maps Resources to Answer Broad Geographic Questions

 9] Mysterious Mission Stars: How to Read Snippets in the Search Results and Pay Attention to Search Details

10] When Was Oil First Discovered in California? How to Discover and Work Through Multiple Competing Claims in Online Resources

11] Can You Die from Apoplexy or Rose Catarrh? How to Find (and Use) Old, Sometimes-Archaic or Obsolete Terminology

12] What’s That Wreck Just Offshore? How to Find Archival Imagery and Use Metadata from Photographs

13] Do Flies Have the Pattern of a Spider on Their Wings? How to Check the Credibility of a Resource You’ve Found

14] What’s the Connection Between “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the General Who Burned the White House? How to Search for Vaguely Remembered Connections Between Ideas

15] What Causes the Barren Zones around Some Plants? How to Know When You Should Go Offline and Do Research in the Real World

16] Is Abyssinia the Same as Eritrea? How to Find Additional Context Information for Your Research

17] The Mystery of the Parrotfish, or Where Does That White Sand Really Come From? How to Triangulate Multiple Sources to Find a Definitive Answer

18] Did Perry Ever Visit the Island of Delos? How to Follow a Long Chain of References to the Ultimate Answer

19] On Being a Great Searcher: Rules of Thumb for Asking Great Questions

20]The Future of Online Search: Why the Research Skills You Learn Today Will Continue to Be Useful in the Future

 

It isn’t perfect. Dan omits or has incomplete descriptions of some very useful items. In Chapter 3 he mentions using “site:” but not the Google Advanced Search page that has it as one of the options. I blogged about that web page on July 6, 2010 in a post titled Web search tactic: Use the Google Advanced (Helpful) Search screen. Chapter 3 also talks about using specialized terms. One good way to find them is in your public library databases such as EBSCOHost. I discussed those on February 24, 2015 in a lengthy blog post titled How to do a better job of speech research than the average Toastmaster (by using your friendly local public and state university libraries). Once you have found a specialized term, you can look for other articles via the subject index.

 

He mentions using “cached:” to find versions of web pages up to six months old, and then the Internet Archive (but not the specific page called the Wayback Machine).

 

When he discusses whether you can die from apoplexy in Chapter 11, he never mentions the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed abstracts database or the PubMed Central (PMC) database with full text of millions of medical articles. For example, apoplexy is discussed in a 2020 article by Axel Karenberg in Neurological Research and Practice titled Historic review: select chapters of a history of stroke. On February 16, 2021 I blogged about PMC in a post titled Giving an effective medical lecture.

 

In Chapter 18 he mentions Worldcat only in connection with Google Books. Back on February 28, 2012 I blogged about 40.5 years of WorldCat – a great tool for digging up books, magazine articles, etc.

 

Dan points out that not everything can be found online for free via Google. Google Scholar won’t lead you to all the magazine articles on a topic. In a post on February 4, 2019 titled Reliable places to find information for your speeches I mentioned Web of Science as one of the preferred online places to look when using one of the public terminals at the Boise State University Library.

 

In my previous post on April 24, 2021 titled What percent of internet browser users know how to find text within a web page I linked to an hour-long YouTube video at MIT Press about Dan’s book, which you might prefer to watch, if you don’t have time to read it.  

 

An image of a 1912 motorist’s tool roll came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

What percent of internet browser users know how to find text within a web page?

Earlier this week I watched an hour-long YouTube video from The MIT Press posted on July 8, 2020 and  titled Author Talk: The Joy of Search by Daniel M. Russell. He discusses his book, The Joy of Search. At about 42 minutes he talks about something not mentioned in the book - using the Find (Control F) command of a web browser to locate text in a web page. Then at 44 minutes he relates three statistics which surprised me.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, less than half (48.9%) of teachers using the internet knew how to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even worse, less than a tenth (9.5%) of U.S. English internet users knew how to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, most amazingly, just 7% of 50,000 Firefox browser users knew how to do this. The other 93% NEVER had used this command. I suspect this occurs because learning to use a browser is considered too simple to require careful instruction, so we often just get the Blind Leading the Blind.

 

Dan initially discussed this topic in a post at his SearchReSearch blog on February 22, 2010 which is titled Why Control-F is the single most important thing you can teach someone about search. It also is discussed in a pair of articles by Alexis C. Madrigal in The Atlantic: one on August 18, 2011 titled Crazy: 90 Percent of people don’t know how to use CTRL+F and another on August 22, 2011 titled Why using Control+F may be the most important computing skill. Daniel M. Russell and Mario Callegaro had yet another article at the  Scientific American Observations Blog on March 26, 2019 titled How to be a better web searcher: Secrets from Google scientists in which they said to learn some tricks:

 

“One is the find-text-on-page skill (that is, Command-F on Mac, Control-F on PC), which is unfamiliar to around 90 percent of the English-speaking, Internet-using population in the US. In our surveys of thousands of web users, the large majority have to do a slow (and errorful) visual scan for a string of text on a web site. Knowing how to use text-finding commands speeds up your overall search time by about 12 percent (and is a skill that transfers to almost every other computer application).”

 

The image was modified from Sebastian Vrancx’s pre-1650 painting of The Blind Leading the Blind at Wlikmedia Commons.  

 

 

How do ‘seconds’ get sold?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Fairview Ave. Grocery Outlet store in Boise I saw pound bags of Belly Flops - irregular jelly beans marketed by Jelly Belly (as shown above). That got me thinking about other examples of how less-than-perfect products get sold by clever manufacturers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple decades ago, when I lived in metro Chicago, Lands’ End had outlet stores, and they sold clothing and other monogrammed products which had been returned by customers. As shown above, I got a large, leather-trimmed, soft-sided suitcase with three compartments for way less than retail. It was used on car trips until being replaced by another suitcase with wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used a #11 scalpel (shown above) and tweezers to cut and remove the monogram. (Those tools both came from the local American Science & Surplus store).

    

I also found that Pepperidge Farm had retail stores which sold cosmetically imperfect products (and bulk packages). About once a month I’d stop by and get myself a frozen layer cake as a treat.

 

Four decades ago, when I lived in Ann Arbor, I wanted a place to store my woodworking tools. It turned out that the Kennedy Manufacturing Company had a factory store in Van Wert, Ohio that sold their seconds for about 30% below retail. I drove down there on a Saturday and filled my car up with an 8-drawer Machinist’s Chest, a Two-Drawer Base Cabinet, a Chest Riser, and a 7-Drawer Industrial Cabinet with wheels. What had made that 7-Drawer Industrial Cabinet a second? It just had a single, thumbnail-sized paint defect on the back!

  

Tater Tots are the best story of a ‘second.’ An article by Kelsey McKinney at EATER on August 28, 2017 is titled The Tater Tot is American ingenuity at its finest. Over six decades ago Ore-Ida took the left-over scraps from cutting potatoes for French Fries, and produced little seasoned cylinders. 

 

Another article in the Boise Weekly 2016 Bar & Restaurant Guide provides more details.

Initially they priced them based on their cost to make. But that was so low customers were suspicious. Market research led them to raise the price, and increase their profits.   

 

Using blackboards for teaching mathematics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackboards have been used as visual aids to teach mathematics for over two centuries, but now are being replaced by newer whiteboards. The May 2021 issue of Scientific American has a web page with an article by Clara Moskowitz titled The Art of Mathematics in Chalk. (The hard copy version on pages 66 to 75 instead is titled Chalkboard Art).

 

There is a series of seven striking images  by Jessica Wynne titled: Isoperimetry, Mixed Gaussians, Branching Waves, Out for a Walk, Organized Chaos, Matching Shapes, and A Collaboration. The text with the image about topology (Matching Shapes) notes that a donut and coffee cup are considered to have the same shape (a single hole), as can be illustrated via an animated gif.  

 

The image with four blackboards at the Helsinki University of Technology came from user Tungsten at Wikimedia Commons.

 

What does it take for you to be joyful – just one thing or everything?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip has the following philosophical dialogue:

Goat: What does it take to make you happy?

Rat: I need every single thing in my life to be going perfectly.

Pig: I need one slice of pizza left in the box.

Goat: Pig may have an easier time.

Pig: Two slices and I weep with joy.

 

I often am willing to settle for one slice to make my day. An image of a pizza slice was modified from this one by Willis Lam at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Maraging steel wasn’t used in armor on the German Tiger I Tank back in World War II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia pages often provide useful, well researched information. But sometimes a page contains pure nonsense. Their page for the Tiger I heavy tank claims:  

“The armour joints were of high quality, being stepped and welded rather than riveted, and were made of maraging steel.”

 

If, as you should, you then check by following their link to the page on Maraging steel, you will find it instead says that type of steel originated at the International Nickel Company (Inco) in the late 1950s. It was not around until fifteen years after the end of World War II!

 

When did the Wikipedia page on that tank first make that mistake? The Wayback Machine shows that on September 28, 2012 the page had added “and were made of maraging steel” – absent from the April 3, 2012 version. In Google searches I was unable to find a reference to back up the claim that maraging steel was used.  

 

But two YouTube videos refer to maraging steel armor: this one and this one. There also is a LinkedIn Pulse article by Henning A. Klovekorn on May 11, 2015 titled The Schwerpunkt Leadership Principle, and a web page from the Hisart Museum in Istanbul.

 

I searched for what steel actually was used for armor on the Tiger, but could not find specifics. A book from by Thomas L. Jentz and Hilary L. Doyle titled Germany’s Tiger Tanks ends with Appendix D on Armor Specifications. It discusses the Tiger II rather than the Tiger I, and describes the PP793 Krupp specification for rolled armor plate – a medium-carbon low-alloy steel with 0.34% carbon, 0.42% manganese, 0.39% silicon, 2.32% chromium and 0.22% molybdenum. According to the Wikipedia page a Grade 200 maraging steel has no carbon, and nominally 18% nickel, 8.5% cobalt, 3.25% molybdenum, 0.2% titanium, and 0.1% aluminum.  

 

Maraging steels have very different compositions and heat treatment response than the medium-carbon low-alloy steels actually used for tank armor in World War II. When cooled from their high temperature austenite structure both types of steels form martensite. As-cooled low-alloy steels have a very high hardness, and the subsequent tempering heat treatment lowers it by precipitating carbides. As-cooled maraging steels instead have a very low hardness, and the subsequent age-hardening heat treatment raises it by precipitation of intermetallic compounds.  

 

An image of a Tiger I tank came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Results from a recent U.S. survey about twenty annoying coworker behaviors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Kathy Morris at ZIPPIA the career expert on March 22, 2021 titled Survey: What each state finds most annoying in a coworker. They surveyed 1210 workers during February and March 2021 about how many were annoyed by twenty different behaviors. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results are shown above in a bar chart (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version). The five most common annoying behaviors are being Too Loud (86%), Gossip (61%), Laziness (53%), Bad at Their Job (42%) and a tie for fifth (38%) between Bad Personal Hygiene and Complainer/Whiner. (Being Too Quiet was only considered annoying by 7%).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, results also were reported for 49 states, with Vermont skipped for too small a sample. For 33 of 49 of states ( or 2/3 rds) being Too Loud was the most annoying behavior. For another four states each it was either Laziness (Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Nebraska) or Tardiness (Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island). For another two each it was being Bad at Their Job (Kentucky & Minnesota), Gossip (Delaware & Washington), or being a Negative/Pessimist (Iowa and North Dakota). For one remaining it was either Frequent Absences (Idaho) or Know It All or Other Smug Behavior (New Hampshire). Idaho has great fishing, which explains our frequent Absences.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many annoying coworkers did people have? As shown above just 8% had none, 27% had one, 54% had two to five, 6% had six to ten, and a very unlucky 5% had more than ten.  

 

But the ZIPPIA article didn’t discuss what to do. On December 23, 2017 I blogged about How to build a bad presentation – describe a problem but not a good solution. There is another article by Robin Madell and Peter A. Gudmondsson at U.S. News on November 30, 2020 titled 10 Types of annoying co-workers and how to deal with them. They discuss what to do about the loud talker, political agitator, gossiper, suck-up, overworked martyr, constant socializer, kitchen slob, weekend warrior, over-sharer, and know-it-all.

 

There also is a 56-minute YouTube video  from Oct 23, 2017 by Bob Sutton titled How to outwit workplace jerks. Sutton wrote a book titled The Asshole Survival Guide.

 

At ZIPPIA there actually is a second article on March 29, 2021 by Maddie Lloyd titled 8 Tips on how to deal with difficult people at work. I was told about the survey in an email from Kristy Crane (in public relations at ZIPPIA) on April 13, 2021 – which didn’t mention that later article.    

 

How many words were in recent speech titles from the top three contestants in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 6, 2021 I blogged about how Your speech needs a great headline – not just a title. That post was a response to an article by Lesley Stephenson titled Titles That Talk which appears on pages 14 and 15 of the April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine. She said five words or less is the maximum recommended length for a speech title. Where did that come from? She said:

 

“Back in 2014, the late Rich Haynes, DTM, and I researched speech titles used by competitors in the World Championship of Public Speaking® going back several years. We quickly saw that the vast majority of the finalists’ titles contained just one to five words.”    

 

How many years are in several? And, have things changed in the six years since 2014? I looked at the press releases from Toastmasters for the 39 titles used by the first, second, and third place speeches from 2008 to 2020.

 

Results are shown above in a histogram. 3 speeches had a single title word, 13 had two words, 9 each had three or four words, just 2 had five words, and only one had six words or ten words. Two was the most common number of words – for fully a third of those speeches. I think these very brief titles only will work for inspirational speeches, but will fail miserably for more common informational speeches. Lesley closed by noting that Aaron Beverly’s second place speech for 2016 took a title to the max (with 57 words). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For comparison I also looked at the 60 titles for feature articles in issues of Toastmaster magazine from 2016 through 2020. Results are shown above in another histogram. Here four was the most common number of words.  38 of 60 articles (63%) had one-to-five word titles. The other 22 of 60 articles (37%) had six-to-ten words in their titles.  

 

A fraudulent email that is not really from NortonLifeLock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I received a phony email (shown above) that is easily identifiable as not really being from NortonLifeLock. The very first sentence reveals that it was not written by someone who speaks English as a first language:

 

“Thank you for Being a part and completing 1 year of Norton antivirus security.”

 

I also have put red circles around the peculiarly mis-spaced commas and periods.  

This is National Library Week, and today is National Bookmobile Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A web page for the American Library Association explains that the theme for this year is Welcome to Your Library. During the pandemic our libraries have been adapting to restrictions on in-person gatherings. In metro Boise most services are virtual, but books can be ordered online for curbside pickup. In the city of Boise library branches recently reopened for browsing on weekday afternoons from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. On February 23, 2020 I blogged about Finding speech topics and doing research, and said you should start with the databases from your friendly local public library.

 

I am a huge fan of public libraries. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, every Thursday a bookmobile (like the one shown above) with a busload of books parked just a half-mile from home. Shelves on it displayed a little of everything, including best-sellers for adults and a couple feet of Dr. Suess for kids. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every couple of weekends my mother drove us a couple miles over to the stunning main Carnegie Library building in Oakland (shown above). It had hundreds of thousands of books. The Carnegie is a cultural jewel – a gigantic complex containing that library, museums of both art and natural history, and a music hall. That library and those museums opened up a whole world to me.   

 

In my early teens (perhaps age 12) I finally got a tan Adult library card to replace my pink Children’s card. At last I could roam the building rather than just the Children’s room. I devoured mass quantities of novels, particularly science fiction. One thing which amazed me was finding a translation of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1924 We, that described a dystopian Stalinist world of green glass earlier than either Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World or George Orwell’s 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four. The narrator and main character in We was D-503, the chief engineer responsible for building an interplanetary spaceship.

   

Along with circulating and reference books, the third floor reading room for their Science and Technology Department had an amazing display with an entire wall containing magazines including titles like: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Bicycling, Car and Driver, High Fidelity, Hot Rod, Modern Photography, Popular Electronics, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Road & Track, and Wireless World.

 

Your speech needs a great headline - not just a title

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article on pages 14 and 15 by Lesley Stephenson titled Titles That Talk and subtitled Short, clear, and compelling titles make a strong statement. It is good but not great, and unfortunately has major blind spots.

 

One excellent point she makes is that punctuation (like question marks or exclamation points) may not be understood by the audience when announced by your introducer.

 

But in her fourth paragraph she makes an outrageous claim that five words or less is the recommended maximum length for a speech title. To support that she says that the vast majority of titles used by finalists in their World Championship speeches contained just one to five words. Speeches for that contest are inspirational (an unusual subset), while most other speeches that Toastmasters give will instead will be informational (and often need longer titles). Her five word maximum reminded me of a similar claim Ryan Urie made in an article titled Make Your Slides Sing in the September 2019 issue of Toastmaster. Ryan claimed that a slide ideally should have no more than five or six words. I blogged about that in a post on September 23, 2019 titled How many words should be on a PowerPoint slide: 6, 12,20, 25, 36, or 49? PowerPoint templates instruct us Click to add title, so that’s what most of us do. 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her second paragraph says good titles have the impact of a billboard, and the article even is illustrated by a billboard with the word OUCH! But that is a bad comparison. A title is way more like the headline for a newspaper article (see above for an imaginary supermarket tabloid trifecta cover). She does mention newspaper articles in her fifth paragraph but never headlines. And the link in her second paragraph in red on steering audience focus is to another article by Judith T. Krauthammer in the January 2018 issue of Toastmaster titled Building your audience, one title at a time which mentions neither newspapers nor headlines. On April 25, 2019 I blogged about how Your presentation and slides need powerful headlines, and on June 4, 2018 I blogged about how A presentation slide, presentation, or blog post needs a great headline rather than just a title.

 

We can see current examples of headlines at the AP TOP NEWS web page from the Associated Press. Here are twenty with an average length of 8.6 words:

 

Official: Biden moving vaccine eligibility date to April 19

Police official: Chauvin was trained to defuse situations

Biden boosted by Senate rules as GOP bucks infrastructure

Authorities: Navy medic shoots 2, is shot and killed on base

As states expand vaccines, prisoners still lack access

World powers seek to bring US back into Iran nuclear deal

Israeli president picks Netanyahu to try to form government

EXPLAINER: Why is North Korea skipping the Tokyo Olympics

Capital officer remembered for humor, paying ultimate price

Viral thoughts: Why COVID-19 conspiracy theories persist

COVID-19 vaccine eligibility expands to 16 and over in NY

Musician couple hosts concerts to fundraise for food pantry

IMF upgrades forecast for 2021 global growth to a record 6%

Florida dismisses 2 nd breach risk at phosphate reservoir

Iran prosecutor say 10 indicted for Ukraine plane shootdown

France to open archive for period covering Rwandan genocide

Eating our lunch: Biden points to China in development push

Baylor beatdown: Bears win title, hang 86 – 70 loss on Gonzaga

Myanmar’s online pop-up markets raise funds for protest

The latest: Montana governor tests positive for COVID-19

 

My imaginary tabloid cover combined images of Elvis, JFK, and the Gulf Breeze UFO from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Trump continues with his Big Lie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 6, 2021 Congress certified results from the 2020 presidential election. Almost three months later as reported in an article on April 4 by Eric Mack at Newsmax titled Trump: ‘Boycott’ businesses for opposing election laws he continued with the ‘pants on fire’ lie  that:

 

 “….They rigged and stole our 2020 Presidential Election, which we won by a landslide….”

 

But back on January 6, 2021 at Poltifact there is another article by Daniel Funke titled Here’s how we know Trump’s repeated claim of a landslide victory is wrong. On January 7, 2021 I also blogged about my disgust in a post titled Spouting Nonsense: a second Spoutly for Donald J. Trump.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Donald has lots of practice lying. At Forbes on January 31, 2021 there is an article by Dan Alexander titled Here are the lies Trump is now telling about his business. It details some  exaggerations about real estate. As shown above, he lies about the number of stories on four of his New York buildings. The average for three is 16% more than reality, but for the Trump World Tower he absurdly claims there are 90 stories rather than 70 (29% more).

 

Motor vehicles and personalities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the March 31, 2021 meeting of the Pioneer Toastmasters Club our Toastmaster, Melissa Towers, picked the theme What Do Vehicles Say About Our Personalities? Tons of articles have been written on that topic. As shown above, a red convertible sports car like the Jaguar E-type almost screams male midlife crisis.

 

Questions for Table Topics (the impromptu speaking section) also were about cars. One participant was asked what driving a hearse said about your personality. At the end of the meeting I commented it might only say you were very practical. Neil Young described that in his 2015 book, Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life and Cars.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Winnipeg Neil and three other guys were in a rock band called the Squires. They started out borrowing his mother’s Standard Ensign four-door sedan to get to their gigs, but barely could fit. Then in the summer of 1963 Neil bought a 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse he named Mortimer Hearseburg (or just Mort), similar to the 1951 model shown above. It had rollers meant for the coffins to slide in and out, that also worked well for loading their amplifiers and speakers. Driving around in Mort gave the Squires an identity which set them apart from other bands. Later on in Toronto he bought a 1953 Pontiac hearse which he drove to California with Bruce Palmer. Neil and Bruce wound up in a successful folk-rock band called the Buffalo Springfield.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about a Cadillac limousine? My parents owned a black 1956 eight-passenger Series 75 (as shown above) back when my grandma was living with us in Pittsburgh. I have two brothers and two sisters, so eventually we outgrew our 1955 Chevy sedan. Mom was looking at getting an eight or nine passenger Chevy station wagon. But Dad saw an ad in the Sunday paper for a used Cadillac limo. He joked that mom should look at that instead. They did, and decided (like Neil’s hearse) it was a practical vehicle for us. The limo originally had belonged to General Matthew Ridgway. We were its fifth owner.  

 

Most of Mom’s sisters lived near Cincinnati, so we often did that ~300 mile drive. We typically stopped for gas southwest of Columbus, at Washington Court House. One time we heard locals, who assumed a black limousine meant a funeral, whispering Who Just Died?

 

When I was in sixth grade our elementary school science club was going to visit the Buhl Planetarium across town. One of the mothers had to cancel at the last minute. Mom just told the other six kids who would have rode with her to join us, and we crammed twelve into the limo.      

 

I’m not biased, am I?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I am, and so are you. We all have our blind spots. On January 1, 2020 there was an article by Dr. John Livingston at the Gem State Patriot News titled Time to call out the Bigots. That title could either mean to draw critical attention to unacceptable behavior, or just to summon someone. (He meant the former.) Dr. Livingston whined about how cutbacks removing athletic programs (baseball, swimming, and wrestling) at Boise State University had eliminated:

 

“…the single best forum to learn respect and to teach the value of ethnic, racial, intellectual, and physical diversity.”

 

Blind Spots

 

What about religious diversity? That is one of his blind spots so it wasn’t on his list. And later in the article he complained about bigotry against a Christian Chaplin (sic):

 

“…the blatant disrespect for the values that underlie concepts of equality and respect for diversity, was the firing of the Boise State football Chaplin.”

 

That situation is discussed in another article at the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) on December 16, 2020 titled Boise State downgrades chaplaincy after FFRF protests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One way of thinking clearly about whether we have blind spots is called the Johari Window. As shown above, we can divide our behaviors into four groups – those either known or unknown to both others and to self. Our blind spots are unknown to us but known to others. There is also an article at Upskill Coach on November 24, 2020 titled The Johari Window Model – How to Become a Great Communicator.

 

College football is frosting – not the cake

 

Dr. Livingston goes on (through rose colored glasses) about his experience playing college football long ago:

“I had the privilege to play for 2 coaches who today are in The College Football Hall of Fame. Not once ever did I hear either of them talk about winning. They talked about what was needed to win, but the winning took care of itself. Focus, effort, work, abandonment of self. Not once did I see or hear about any action by a coach or fellow teammate that could be construed as being prejudicial or discriminatory. In any competitive environment, discrimination is irrelevant.”

But that was nonsense. In an earlier article at the Gem State Patriot News on October 19, 2019 titled Diversity, Discrimination and Discernment he reveals:

 

“I grew up in Ohio in the 1960s. In Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, football was and remains today a religion. I was lucky enough in the late ’60s and early ’70s to play for two state championship high school football teams and one NCAA Division 3 Championship football team. My high school team was completely segregated—Upper Arlington, and my college team was one of the 1st to be completely integrated—Wittenberg University.”

 

I lived for seven years in Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) and Columbus (The Ohio State University) and therefore have heard way too many stories about how college sports supposedly build character.

 

Livingston’s latest Gem State Patriot News article on football appeared on March 13, 2021 and is titled If not now, when? If not you, who? It tells three stories - about West Point, Tuskegee Institute and Texas A & M. He gushes:

 

“What course of study requires students to get up at 5 AM, 4 days a week all winter long and lift weights and run before even going to class? These students come from all races and nationalities. By working toward a common goal, sweating and suffering side by side they learn to respect each other and themselves. And what keeps them together? What makes them not want to quit? Ans. They don’t want to let their fellow teammate down. Isn’t that the ultimate form of respect? You don’t learn that in sensitivity training. What class is this? Football.”

 

He continued:

 

“I reread a book last weekend called THE JUNCTION BOYS about a 10-day summer practice session at Junction Texas that Paul Bear Bryant conducted his first year as head coach at Texas A&M, 120 boys started camp, and 32 came back—the rest quit…. It didn’t matter if they were white, Hispanic, or Native American.”

 

Back at that camp in 1954 there were no black students, and the first only arrived in 1963. Livingston ends his article by whining:

“It is time for Christian Conservatives to get back to the work of teaching and practicing virtues. We must take our country back from the ‘regressive’ narcissists.

If not now, when? If not you, who?”

 

But “if not now, when” has nothing to do with Christian Conservatives. It comes from the Jewish sage Hillel in the Pirkei Avot. One translated longer version of that quote (there are others) begins:  

 

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?"