What does this hand gesture mean?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Coffing, who blogs as The Speech Doctor, has a post on August 1, 2020 titled The Best Advice on Gestures in which he claims the one shown above offends nobody in any country around the world. Presumably he thinks what he terms The Palm Gesture only means Stop or That’s Enough. Last week he linked to that post from the Public Speaking Network at LinkedIn.

 

But he is quite mistaken. The image shown above is an illustration used in the Wikipedia article about the Mountza (or Moutza), the most traditional insult among Greeks. The Mountza or Hand Push mimics pushing excrement into the face of a prisoner. It also is discussed in another Wikipedia article on Obscene Gesture, which says in Africa it can mean You might have any of five fathers (you are a bastard). Both those other meanings are discussed in an August 18, 1996 New York Times article from Reuters titled What’s A-O.K. in the U.S.A. is Lewd and Worthless Beyond.

 

And it has still another meaning. On February 19, 2022 I blogged about A dictionary of gestures with over 880 entries. In that post I quoted from another article from CBC Radio that explained it also was an Arab greeting, so people thought they were being waved on rather than being told to Stop. Be careful when using gestures, since they are far from universal.

 

An Exaltation of Larks – a book with line drawings illustrating collective nouns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary say that a collective noun is:

 

“a noun such as ‘team’ or ‘flock’ that refers to a group of people or things”

 

On January 9, 2023 I blogged about Taking pride in collective nouns. In that post I mentioned a couple illustrated books about them. From the main Boise public library, I borrowed the second, 138-page, 1977 edition of an older book by James Lipton titled An Exaltation of Larks or the venereal game. This edition adds over a hundred new entries beyond the 1968 edition, some illustrated by hilarious black-and-white line drawings. Some examples are these twenty for professions:

 

Bacteriologists     colony

Brokers                 portfolio

Cab Drivers          drove

Chemists              colloid

Economists          recession

Foresters              stalk

Gardeners            sprinkling

Golfers                  lie

Gymnasts             tumbler

Harpists                melody

Journalists            slant

Judges                   sentence

Mechanics            torque

Photographers    click

Physicists             nucleus

Playwrights          plot

Public Speakers   twaddle

Repairmen           overcharge

Undertakers        unction

Urologists             void

 

The image of four judges came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Does the average American use 130 rolls of toilet paper a year? Is 15% of global deforestation due to toilet paper?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some statistics we read are merely crap. An article in the Spring 2015 World Wildlife Magazine titled Price of Toilet Paper for the Planet claims:

 

“30 POUNDS: Average amount of toilet paper used by Americans per capita in a year. That’s roughly 130 rolls. The U.S. is the world’s biggest buyer of toilet paper.”

 

But my rolls of Scott 1000s shown above each weigh 0.413 pounds, so 30 pounds would correspond to just 73 rolls. Right on the package it says a roll lasts a week, so I’d more likely use 52 rolls per year rather than 130.

 

An old article by Joan Reinhardt Reiss in E: The Environmental Magazine on May 15, 2009 titled The Toilet Paper Problem stated that:

 

“According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), deforestation is the single greatest cause of global warming, and toilet tissue is responsible for 15% of all deforestation.”

 

Similar 15% claims have been stated since then. For example, an article by Kaitlyn Wylde at Futurism on November 9, 2017 is titled 15% of deforestation is due to toilet paper alone. Here’s how we can fix this.

 

The BBC Radio 4 program More or Less: Behind the Statistics for January 21, 2023 was titled Does toilet paper cause 15% of global deforestation? They described how:

 

“A British company has claimed that the production and use of toilet paper is responsible for 15% of deforestation globally. We investigate the claim and ask what the true environmental cost of toilet paper is. Charlotte McDonald talks to climate change scientist Professor Mary Gagen, chief adviser on forests to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the WWF.”

 

That company, Sirius, directed them to a 2019 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council – which does not contain that 15%. Presumably it was one titled The Issue with Tissue, which can be downloaded as a 31-page .pdf file. (There also is a June 2020 follow-up report titled The Issue with Tissue 2.0: How the tree-to-toilet pipeline affects our climate crisis, which doesn’t have that number either. The latest from NRDC is in an article by Jennifer Skene and Shelley Vinyard on September 13, 2022 also titled The Issue with Tissue).

 

Ms. Gagen suggested that the 15% likely was instead from a 10 to 14% for the entire pulp and paper industry. When the BBC contacted Sirius they said they were going to revise their radio ads to use another statistic they could back up for marketing.

 

How to write a song or a speech that matters

 

In 2022 singer-songwriter Dar Williams published a 276-page book titled How to Write a Song That Matters. It follows her having given a decade of annual retreats titled Writing a Song That Matters. I was curious to read it because a typical five-to-seven-minute Toastmasters speech takes the same time as a song (but without music or poetry). Her book is divided into seven sections:

 

INTRODUCTION(S)

INSPIRATION

NARRATIVE

WORDS

MUSIC (IN OTHER WORDS…)

CROSSROADS AND ENDINGS

BRINGING OUR SONGS INTO THE WORLD

THE SONGWRITER (YOU AND ME)

 

In the section on INSPIRATION a chapter titled That First Inspiration begins on page 15 with:

 

“I call it ‘The Window Opens.’

 

Children’s author Natasha Wing calls it ‘Getting the Tinglies.’

 

Novelist Stephanie Kallos calls it ‘Open for Business.’

 

There is a sensation we get when we know that something we’ve heard, or the thought we’ve just thought, has the makings of a work of art.

 

We just have that feeling: this full moon, this stone in my hand, or this strange headline has just presented itself in a certain way. I’m open for business; I get the tinglies; the window opens.

 

In 1994 my housemate, Sarah Davis said, ‘I think you’re going to want to write a song about this news story. There was an ice storm in Philadelphia, and the deejays asked people to turn off their electricity so they could power the hospitals. And everyone did.’

 

That was interesting. I nodded my head. It was a good story about neighborliness. It was great fodder for someone’s song, maybe not mine. Then Sarah added a detail.

 

‘They said you could watch the lights going out in entire buildings. Even the businesses.’

 

This wasn’t just about neighbors. It was about civilization. I wrote a long song called ‘Mortal City.’ “

 

Dar left off that it happens in Philadelphia. She wrote a seven-minute song about a woman having a very strange first date - with the brother of the guy she worked next to. You can listen to it here on YouTube and read the lyrics here on her web site. He walked over to her apartment during an ice storm, and they had a spaghetti dinner. But then he couldn’t go home because of the continuing awful weather. Her radiators were not working, but normally she used electric heat. They wound up in her bed talking while “wrapped up like ornaments waiting for another season.” On page 166 she describes how alternating between two variations on an Em chord that reminded her of a life-support monitor became the basis for that song’s melody.

 

In the section titled NARRATIVE there are brief chapters titled Where Did I Go?, Where Did I Really Go?, What Happened?, What Really Happened? How Does It Feel? How Does It Really Feel?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chapter titled Tell the Story and Notice How It’s Heard begins on page 99. She discusses a James Keelaghan’s song, about the Mann Gulch Fire, which I blogged about on February 7, 2022 in a post titled Cold Missouri Waters – a folk song about a smokejumper tragedy. Dar asks:

 

“How did James distill all of those pages into five verses with no chorus? Maybe James told fifty people the story, or maybe he took some long walks and followed his own narrative intuition. Either way, the song strikes a powerful balance between an exciting plot with intimately observed details and universal perspectives with crushing emotional lessons.”

 

She mentions having performed a cover version of that song with her friends Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky, which you can listen to on YouTube.   

 

In the section about WORDS, on page 119 she discusses the song As Cool As I Am, which you can watch here on YouTube and find the lyrics here on her web site. (The Wikipedia article about Dar mentions that song as being an unofficial anthem for Bryn Mawr College). The first line in the last verse first began as:

 

“Oh – and that’s not easy. I don’t know why you had to get so low-down and sleazy.”

 

But she felt it wasn’t quite right, went back, and revised it to instead be:  

 

“Oh – and that’s not easy. I don’t know what you saw, I want somebody who sees me.”

 

A chapter in BRINGING OUR SONGS INTO THE WORLD titled Performing For An Audience begins on page 243 with:

 

“The words that helped me break through and find my equilibrium as a performer were ‘You are giving a gift to the audience. You are not asking for something.’ The relationship went from ‘Do you like me?’ to ‘This is what I’m offering. I hope you like it.’ A show that feels dead or badly received can still do a number on me. But performing for an audience of ten people or more is how we can find out how our songs connect with the world, imperfect a science as that is, and sharing our art is part of a bigger personal and overall human experience than we have when we keep our songs to ourselves and our pets.”

 

When I read the title of her book, the song I immediately thought of was the first one on her 2012 album, In the Time of Gods. You can watch her sing I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything live on YouTube, and read the lyrics here on her web site. She discussed it in an article by Mike Ragogna at the Huffington Post on July 11, 2012 titled ‘In the Time of Gods’: A conversation with Dar Williams. She said:

 

“Well, it's looking at a cycle, which is something that gives me a lot of priorities to look at. When I heard, after 9/11, that the Taliban was mostly comprised of the orphans from the war between Russia and Afghanistan, my response was, ‘So how do we get in right now to places like refugee camps? How do we avoid conflicts so that you don't have these incredibly marginalized kids who grow up with no parents to sort of temper all of the terrible things of the world and nurture you through it? How do we avoid the kinds of situations that create generations of grown up orphans with no parents, who have no compassion, who know war, who create war, who do things out of fear and a sense of need? How do you break the cycle?’ "  

 

A blog post last week used stale results from a 2014 survey instead of those from 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Psyblog by Jeremy Dean there is a post on January 18, 2023 titled The Top 5 Personal Fears in America. He reports results from the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears.  Jeremy says #1 is Walking alone at night, #2 is Becoming the victim of identity theft, #3 is Safety on the internet, #4 is Being the victim of a mass/random shooting, and #5 is Public speaking.

 

But that was the first of a series of eight Chapman surveys done in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020-21, and 2022. Why didn’t he instead report results from their latest 2022 survey?

 

And, how different are those 2014 Top Five from the latest done in 2022? Walking alone at night dropped from #1 to #72, Becoming the victim of identity theft fell from #2 to #21, Safety on the internet fell from #3 (it was replaced by Cyber-terrorism) to #12, Being the victim of a mass/random shooting dropped from #4 to #32, and Public speaking dropped from #5 to #46. None of that Top Five from 2014 even made it into the Top Ten in 2022.

 

One reason for the differences was that questions in the 2014 survey were asked in several different ways, I blogged about that in a post on October 27, 2014 titled What do the most Americans fear? The Chapman Survey on American Fears and the press release copying reflex. That problem was corrected in their 2015 and later surveys.

 

Demonyms aren’t about demons, but they can be in Table Topics questions for Toastmasters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might guess that demonyms are about demons, but you would be wrong. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a demonym as:   

 

“a word (such as Nevadan or Sooner) used to denote a person who inhabits or is native to a particular place.”

 

The place might be a city, county, state, country, or continent. There also is a Wikipedia page with a set of lists. The word demonym comes from a rather obscure 160-page 1990 book by Paul Dixon titled What Do You Call a Person From...? A Dictionary of Resident Names. Neither my local public library, nor the Boise State University Library has a copy. But the topic also is discussed in a December 2010 Master of Arts thesis by Michael Roberts at the University of New England, titled The Lexical Semantics of Social Categories: Demonyms and Occupation Words in English. Mr. Roberts adds that there are two categories of demonyms - endonyms (or autonyms) which are words used by people of that place to refer to people from a place, and exonyms which are words used by people who are not of that place to refer to people from a place.

 

I blogged about demonyms for cities in a post on September 2, 2013 titled What should we call residents of that city? and on March 26, 2017 in a second post titled Table Topics – What should we call people who live in that city? In southwest Idaho we have demonyms for city residents like Boiseans, Meridianites, Nampans, and Caldwellers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But Boiseans could either refer to residents of Boise city (the state capital in Ada County), or the adjacent Boise county, as shown above.  

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says demonym was first used in 1990, but the Oxford English Dictionary says the current 1990 meaning:

 

“A proper name by which a native or resident of a specific place is known”

 

supersedes two other obsolete meanings:

 

“A general descriptive name used by a writer as a pen name, e. g. ‘An Amateur’, ‘An English Gentleman’, etc.” [first used in 1867]

 

and

 

“A personal name derived from the name of a place from which a person comes.” [first used in 1895]

 

Back on June 26, 1963 President John F. Kennedy famously gave his Ich bin ein Berliner speech, which the Wikipedia page notes led to an urban legend that he’d called himself a jelly doughnut (Berliner). But people in Berlin would call that food a Pfannkuchen. Two other meaty German names for city residents are Frankfurter and Hamburger.

 

Wikipedia has a List of demonyms for US states and territories which shows Hoosiers rather than Indianans, but otherwise mostly shows forming the demonyms using +ns, +ians, +ers, +ites, +ders, and +rs (preceded by appropriate subtractions). Residents of Connecticut are Connecticuters; those carrying knives should be Connecticutters. But Hawaiians is reserved for people of Native Hawaiian descent and the rest just are awkwardly known as Hawaii residents.  

 

Images of a demon logo and Idaho counties map were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

UPDATE

The Pearls Before Swine cartoon on February 25, 2023 is about talking to a Hamburger and a Frankfurter. 

Demonizing Dietary Oxalate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my last post on January 16, 2023 I blogged about Should you believe The Plant Paradox book? No. It’s already out-of-date. At the McGill Office for Science and Society there is an article by Jonathan Jarry on January 6, 2023 titled The Demonization of Dietary Oxalate Has Begun. That new demon is described in a just published book by Sally K. Norton titled Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload Is Making You Sick—and How to Get Better. But Mr. Jarry calls her identification of that demon wishful thinking.

 

The image of a blank medal came from Openclipart, and was finished using PowerPoint.

 

 

Should you believe The Plant Paradox book? No.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on October 9, 2017 I blogged about a book in a post titled It must be true, since I read it in a book. Several months ago, at my friendly local public library, I saw the different 2017 book by Steven R. Gundry titled The Plant Paradox (and subtitled The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain) on the new books shelf. Amazingly there are 21 copies in the Treasure Valley libraries union catalog - six in the city of Boise, six in Ada County, etc. He opens by stating:

 

“Suppose that in the next few pages I told you that everything you thought you knew about your diet, your health, and your weight is wrong. For decades, I believed those lies as well. I was eating a ‘healthy’ diet (after all, I’m a heart surgeon). I rarely ate fast food; I consumed low-far dairy and whole grains.”

 

My reaction was about the same as when I saw the cover of the 1974 Firesign Theatre comedy album Everything You Know Is Wrong. While I am ready to be amused, it will take an awful lot more to persuade me. I just shook my head, put the book down and walked away.     

 

At Science-Based Medicine on October 25, 2022 Harriet Hall reviewed that book in an article titled The Plant Paradox: Steven Gundry’s war on lectins. She concluded he was peddling nonsense. The Cleveland Clinic on May 22, 2022 has another article titled Plant Paradox diet: Does it work for weight loss? which says to try something else. And, back when the book came out, James Hamblin at the The Atlantic had yet another article on April 24, 2017 titled The Next Gluten.

 

It gets worse though. Dr. Gundry also is selling supplements. Joe Schwarcz at the Mcgill Office for Science and Society has an article on February 1, 2018 titled What’s a ‘Vital Red’ supplement and should I be taking it? Joe’s answer is heck no.

 

The image is edited from an old poster at the Library of Congress.

 

How not to answer: “So, what you do?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A common question for breaking the ice in a conversation is to ask someone what they do (for a living). It also often shows up in a job interview. And it might also be asked in Table Topics at a Toastmasters club meeting. As is shown above, the January 10, 2023 Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage has a broader reply that he just converts oxygen, water, and food into energy and poop. That’s an expanded version of a reply by famous artist Marcel Duchamp:

 

“In a 1959 interview for Newsweek Duchamp states: ‘Oh, I am a breather, a respirateur. Isn’t that enough? Why do people work? Why do people think they have to work?’ ”

 

On December 8, 2022 I blogged about how Job interview questions about soft skills also can be used for Table Topics questions at Toastmasters club meetings.

 

At the Harvard Business Review on January 10, 2023 there is an article by Joel Schwartzberg titled How to answer “Tell me about a time you failed” in a job interview.

 

Statistics on fear of public speaking should be a serious subject for marketing of Toastmasters International. The January issue of Toastmaster magazine instead has a silly humor article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 30 of the January 2023 Toastmaster magazine has an article by John Cadley titled The Non-Glossophobes and subtitled Want to know who’s not afraid of public speaking? Don’t ask Google. He says nearly 75% of people are afraid of public speaking, and then asks about the 25% who are not. I was appalled that his Funny You Should Say That column chose to make light of what instead should be a serious issue. He opens with:

 

“If you think Google can tell you everything there is to know, ask it to search ‘people who are not afraid of public speaking.’ Research indicates that nearly 75% of people are afraid, so that leaves 25% who aren’t. Who are they? Google won’t tell you. It seems to assume you’re really in that fearful 75% category and have simply made a mistake, which it is happy to correct by offering you 10 trillion sites on … fear of public speaking!”

 

And a paragraph later he says:

 

“Google’s ignorance is not only alarming; it’s insulting. Apparently, it doesn’t know about the hundreds of thousands of Toastmasters who have overcome their fears to become self-assured, polished speakers. Are they among the 25% that Google’s clutching global algorithms can’t seem to find? I believe they are. I think Google is jealous. Google can only speak through canned, electronic voices. Google has no compelling message to share. Google doesn’t know what to say until you ask it a question. Google has no body language. Google can’t give an Ice Breaker speech. Google is a dud.”

 

We can estimate just how few Toastmasters there ever have been compared with the world population. For an upper bound, let’s assume a current membership of 300,000 times a hundred years for a total membership of 30 million. There currently are about eight billion people in the world, so Toastmasters members would be just three-eighths of a percent and barely scratching the surface. (If we instead compare with the alleged 75% fearing public speaking, that would rise to a measly half percent). There are two possible responses to that miniscule percentage. Both are in an old joke about shoe salesmen repeated by Ray Brimble at String Theory on July 19, 2020 in an article titled The Urgency of Nothingness. Two salesmen are sent from New York City to a developing country. One wires back that he is returning tomorrow because the situation is hopeless, since no one wears shoes. The other wires that he’s staying because there is incredible business potential, since no one yet wears shoes.  

 

 Real statistics on fear should be used to market Toastmasters International. I suspect John didn’t bother to do a Google search, but instead just took the first pathetic line from a Toastmasters press release on October 21, 2015 titled Five Public Speaking Myths Debunked:

 

“Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is a common social phobia, with an estimated 75 percent of the population experiencing some form of anxiety before giving a speech.”

 

It was repeated on as the second sentence in another press release on October 15, 2019 which I blogged about on December 8, 2019 in a post titled Toastmasters press releases confuse a fear of public speaking with a social phobia. Any time you see a phrase like ‘the population’ you should immediately ask where that was, when the survey that found that percent was done, who did it, and why. On March 22, 2019 I blogged about An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support.

 

The phony 73% (for men), 74% average and 75% (for women) was made up in 2012 by Statistic Brain, who claimed it instead came from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. But it was wrongly cited, as I blogged about on August 14, 2020 in a post titled Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What percent of people really fear public speaking? There are results for several countries, and two groups of countries, as shown above in a bar chart. Click on it for a better, larger view. On August 15, 2012 I blogged about how Surveys show that public speaking isn’t feared by the majority of adults in nine developed and eleven developing countries. On February 7, 2011 I posted about Fears of superiors and public speaking in Hong Kong, and on March 25, 2011 I blogged about how Almost one in 4 Swedes fears public speaking. On June 5, 2015 I posted about how Snakes are the most common fear for Canadians, followed by heights and public speaking. And on March 3, 2020 I blogged about how An obscure UK survey from 2005 found public speaking was the most common fear there.

 

Many surveys have been done on fear of public speaking in the U.S. My bar chart includes a half dozen. On October 11, 2011 I blogged about results (21.2%) reported by Ruscio et al in a 2008 article about the National Comorbidity Survey – Replication [NCS-R] in a post titled What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia? And on September 24, 2022 I blogged about how A YouGov America poll in June 2022 found public speaking was the fourth most common fear for adults (23%) and women (26%), but the second most common for men (20%) . An article by Geoffrey Brewer at Gallup (40%) on March 19, 2001 titled Snakes top list of American fears also included results (45%) from their 1998 survey. An on October 27, 2009 I blogged about a 1973 Bruskin survey (40.6%) in a post titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? Finally, on May 19, 2011 I blogged about (45%) America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring survey.

 

If you want to talk about fear of public speaking to market Toastmasters, please use a real statistic specific to a country. For example, since there are 264 million adults in the US, multiplying by 0.212 leads to saying there are 56 million of us who fear public speaking.  

 

The cartoon of a woman speaker was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Curious People and Creative Acts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For inspiration I have been borrowing books from my friendly local public library on broad topics like curiosity and creativity. An excellent book from 2021 is Sarah Stein Greenberg’ Creative Acts for Curious People – how to think, create, and lead in unconventional ways.

 

The fourth and fifth paragraphs in her Introduction say:

 

“At the Stanford d.school, we’ve created an environment where normal rules are suspended and we constantly use our imaginations. Our purpose is to help everyone unlock their creative abilities. We cook up special ways for people to interact with each other. We make a lot of time for feelings, and we act like that’s no different than doing any other kind of work. We speak a language of encouragement. We’re hard on work but soft on people, and we don’t confuse kindness with weakness. We try things out before we know exactly what will happen, and then we spend time thinking and talking about what, exactly, just happened. Our furniture rolls around.

 

Our way of being and working contains a standing invitation to everyone to join us. Almost without exception, we can convince you to come up with a secret handshake at a moment’s notice. We know how to engage a room of adults in a fierce game of Rock Paper Scissors played at top volume. We can give you a bin filled with art supplies, and teach you to make something world-changing with them. We can show you how to stop self-censoring your most interesting ideas.”  

 

There are 81 assignments in that book, divided into the following 16 categories:

 

See things in a new way

Work well with others

Make sense of your insights

Come up with ideas

Build something

Tell a compelling story

Put your work out there

Take control of your own learning

Locate your own voice

Get out and discover

Pick up the pace

Slow down and focus

Have fun

Work toward equity

Peer into the future

Tackle a whole project

 

For example, consider these four assignments.

 

Assignment 2 is titled How to Talk to Strangers:

 

 “….Your third mission is harder.

Pretend you’re lost and ask a stranger for directions to a specific destination nearby.

If you get the person to give you directions, then ask them to draw you a map.

If they agree to draw you a map, then ask them for their phone number so you can call them if you need more help and get lost along the way.

If they agree to give you their phone number, then call them to see if they answer.

If they answer, thank them for their help and let them know you found your destination.”

 

Assignment 17 is titled Expert Eyes:

 

“Walk around the block for twenty minutes or so. This could be anywhere: your neighborhood, a farm, a bowling alley, and so on. Draw what you see in a notebook.

 

Repeat this exact same walk three or four more times and ask someone with a different expertise to join you each time. Being an ‘expert’ can mean many different things: you just want to be with folks whose discipline has trained their eyes in a specific way. Try a civil engineer, an artist, a landscaper, a historian, a transit worker, a community volunteer, or a small business advocate.

 

Ask your expert to talk aloud and tell you what they notice. Each time, sketch what the expert sees. Afterward, compare your original drawing, the one you drew when walking by yourself, to your subsequent drawings.What new and varied details or insights are there? How has your perception of the area shifted?”

 

On February 28, 2014 I blogged about walking around and finding Speech topics from near your neighborhood. And I described having your perceptions shift in a post on May 25, 2018 titled Cognitive biases and the frequency illusion.

 

Assignment 52 is titled Tell Your Granddad:

 

 “Your goal is to take an abstract concept and attempt to express the idea in as many ways as possible using metaphors, analogies, and similes. To do so, first imagine an audience of someone you know well and understand but who is very different from you. For the purposes of this game, call him Granddad.

 

Granddad probably grew up in a pre-digital technology era. He may still prefer a toaster to a panini press. He reads the newspaper in print and always buys his movie tickets in person, at the theater. He’s a smart guy, but he’s just not into all this modern stuff.

 

Your goal is to make sure your communication has reference points Granddad will connect to and immediately understand.”

 

Assignment 81 is titled I Used to Think & Now I Think. For it you make a two-column list with your previous ideas about a topic or another assignment, and your present thoughts (after completing it).

 

The image of a man using microscope in a lab was adapted from one at the Library of Congress.

 

Taking pride in collective nouns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary say that a collective noun is:

 

“a noun such as ‘team’ or ‘flock’ that refers to a group of people or things”

 

At LoveEnglish on March 15, 2019 there is an article titled Collective Nouns: 200+ Most Important Collective Nouns in English. And there is a book-length, 153 page Collective-Noun-Catalog from Miami University (the one in Ohio). The downtown Boise Public Library has a 2013 book titled A Compendium of Collective Nouns: from an armory of aardvarks to a zeal of zebras. This year there is another book, described in an article by Heather Colpitts in the Langley Advance Times on May 19, 2022 titled ‘A holiness of donuts’ and other quirky collective nouns are in Langley writer’s new book.

 

We commonly think of those describing:

 

          African Animals

Camels                    caravan

Cheetahs                coalition

Crocodiles              bask

Elephants               parade

Giraffes                   tower

Hippopotamuses  bloat

Horses                    herd

Leopards                leap

Lions                       pride

Rhinoceros            crash

Tigers                      streak

Zebras                     zeal

 

However, we also can describe people by their:

 

                Professions

accountants         column

astronomers        constellation

bankers                 vault

barbers                 clipping

beauticians          vanity

carpenters           pound

chefs                     dash

criminals              cell

electrochemists  battery

fishermen            drift

florists                  bloom

gangsters             mob

hoodlums            gang

lawyers                 bar

librarians              shelf

linguists                clause

mathematicians  set

pickpockets          snatch

plumbers              flood

postmen               express

preachers             pontification

weathermen       flurry

welders                spatter

 

But we don’t have that many good words for:

 

           Foods

Apples         bushel

Asparagus   bundle

Bagels          boulder

Bananas      bunch

Beans           hill

burritos       boatload

Chowder     cauldron

Corn             shock

Donuts        holiness

Eggs             clutch

Grapes        cluster

Peas            pod

Soup           kettle

tacos          truckload

tarts           jam

tortillas     flotilla

 

This post was inspired by an article by Brenda Rodriguez at KTVB TV on January 6, 2023 titled 67 years of struggle, triumph, tortillas – family-owned Idaho bakery celebrating more success. I couldn’t find a collective noun for tortillas in the Collective-Noun-Catalog and came up with flotilla.

 

The image of lions came from Wikimedia Commons.