To be in this speaking contest you also need to be a cowboy or cowgirl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Kanzie Johnson at FortWorth on March 9, 2026 titled Debunking the myth of the quiet cowboy, and subtitled There aren’t many public speaking competitions that require being a cowboy as a prerequisite, but we know of at least one that happened right here in Fort Worth.

 

It is called the Bridles and Brains Collegiate Ranch Horse Competition. Each rider competes in two-partner ranch penning, ranch roping, ranch trail, ranch reining, public speaking, and a media interview. Those horse-related events are as follows:

 

“The ranch roping event is built upon the practicalities of working on a farm. At least 10 numbered cattle and a handful of unnumbered ones fill the pen, with two cows assigned to each number. When the rider enters, a number is called and they’re free to rope either cow wearing it.

Two-partner team penning is the only on-horse event done in pairs, where riders work together to move a herd of numbered cattle from one pen to another. When a number is called, the team must separate that cow and drive it into the catch pen as quickly as possible. 

Ranch trail replicates challenges riders might encounter during a day on a ranch, such as crossing ground poles, dragging an object by rope or opening a mailbox from horseback.

Ranch reining, meanwhile, is a higher-energy display where contestants follow a pattern with maneuvers like sliding stops and spins to showcase the horse’s responsiveness.”

The 1907 theater poster came from the Library of Congress.

10 simple rules for how to win a Nobel Prize

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently winners for the 2025 Nobel Prizes were announced. On September 7, 2025 I had blogged about Ten simple rules for improving communication among scientists, and on September 12, 2025 I blogged about Ten simple rules for attending your first scientific conference. I wondered if there was a similar article in that series about the Nobel Prize. There indeed is. That article by Richard J. Roberts in PLoS Computational Biology on April 2, 2015 is titled Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize. His rules are to:

 

  1] Never start your career by aiming for a Nobel Prize.

 

  2] Hope that your experiments fail occasionally.

 

  3] Collaborate with other scientists, but never more than two other people.

 

  4] To increase your odds of winning, be sure to pick your family carefully.

 

  5] Work in the laboratory of a previous Nobel Prize winner.

 

  6] Even better than Rule 5, try to work in the laboratory of a future Nobel Prize winner.

 

  7] Always design and execute your best experiments at a time when your luck is running high.

 

  8] Never plan your life around winning a Nobel Prize.

 

  9] Always be nice to Swedish scientists.

 

 10] Study biology.

 

An image was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Is nobody afraid of public speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On August 31, 2025 I blogged about a dogmatic claim that everyone fears public speaking in a contrary post titled Not everyone fears public speaking. The opposite and equally silly claim has turned up in a five-minute YouTube video by Jim Cathcart on October 8, 2025 titled Nobody Is Afraid Of Public Speaking. He mentioned:

 

“It’s widely known that public speaking is the greatest fear in the world. That comes from a study that was done in the 1980s or 1990s and it ranked public speaking as the number one fear but it was a limited study and it said that public speaking was feared more than death itself. But that’s not a scientific fact. That has not been statistically validated.

 

But the point that I’m making is that those people who say that they’re afraid of public speaking are not afraid of public speaking. They’re just not. They’re afraid of being judged. Right?”

 

Back on May 19, 2011 I blogged about America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey. Jim didn’t mention any survey showing no one feared public speaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of people have no problem with being judged: they participate in speech contests, like the series with 30,000 people held by Toastmasters International starting at clubs and leading all the way up from Area, to Division, to District, to Region, and their World Championship. Page 30 of the March 2001 Toastmaster magazine describes that Mr. Cathcart would receive the Golden Gavel award from Toastmasters in August 2001.  

 

Silhouettes of a podium and a judge both were adapted from OpenClipArt.  

 

Nursing Story Slam: five-minute contest speeches from the University of Calgary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article from the University of Calgary Faculty of Nursing titled Nursing Story Slam. They had contests with five-minute speeches in 2023 and 2024. The 2025 contest will be held on May 8, 2025. Videos from this contest will be of interest for Toastmasters who are in nursing or other areas of medicine.

 

There is a great YouTube video from a critical care flight nurse titled Logan Rutter BN’15 – 2024 Nursing Story Slam | UCalgary Nursing.

 

Another excellent video is titled Katherine Stelfox – 2024 Nursing Story Slam | UCalgary Nursing. This deals frankly with defecation, so it is not safe for work. It discusses a situation where a wheelchair patient needed to be lifted, but the two staff members and lift already were tied up taking care of another patient.

 

 The cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

Postdoc Research Slams – three-minute presentation contests

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 24, 2024 I blogged about how PhD students can give Three Minute Thesis speeches. That’s half the average of six minutes (five to seven range) for a typical Toastmasters speech.

 

There is an article by Joe Gettler at the Brookhaven National Laboratory Newsroom on February 18, 2025 titled 10 Scientists Compete in Research Slam at Brookhaven Laboratory. Their 2024 Research SLAM was held on December 5, 2024, and both early-career scientists and postdocs competed.

 

There also is a news article by Blessing (E. B.) Odunyi at the University of Calgary on February 28, 2025 titled Three minutes, endless impact: UCalgary’s Postdoc Research Slam celebrates innovation and storytelling. Each three-minute speech used a single slide. It was the seventh year for this competition. There is a YouTube video from February 26, 2025 with highlights from the 2025 event.

 

The clock face was modified from this image at OpenClipArt.

 

PhD students can give Three Minute Thesis speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a specialized brief presentation format for graduate students in Doctor of Philosophy programs called the Three Minute Thesis (3MT). It started in 2008 at the University of Queensland, spread to over 200 universities, and even has a Wikipedia page. The competitor guide allows for just one static PowerPoint slide rather than the twenty in longer Ignite or Pecha Kucha formats. Here in Idaho there are web pages from both Boise State University and the University of Idaho.

 

At the MIT News on April 30, 2024 there is an article by Amanda Cornwall titled Science communication competition brings research into the real world about their version called the MIT Research Slam.

 

Back on January 10, 2020 I blogged about How old are brief (3 to 7 minute) speech formats?

 

The cartoon was assembled from a DIY clock face and number three at Openclipart.

 

Trying to break a Guinness World Record for speeches given in 24 hours

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until today I was not aware there is a Guinness World Record for the number of speeches given in 24 hours. Then I saw an article by Jon Anderson in the Hoover Sun on April 29, 2023 titled Hoover man seeks to break speech Guinness World Record. (Hoover is a city in north central Alabama with a population of ~93,000 and is located near Birmingham). The article explains:

 

“Patrick O’Mara is a subrogation analyst for the State Farm insurance company who has a side business providing training in public speaking, wants to break the Guinness record of 30 speeches in 24 hours, which was set in Gujarat, India by a man named Piyush Vyas. O’Mara’s goal is to do 40 speeches in 24 hours, and his target date is June 8.  

 

There are certain conditions that must be met for each speech to qualify for the Guinness World Record. Each speech must be an unscripted, unique speech that lasts for at least 10 minutes, which means that he can’t give the same presentation 40 times, or even twice.

 

Each speech must be in a different venue, and each venue must be capable of seating at least 50 people. Also, there must be at least 10 people in the audience at each speech, with no duplicate audience members.”

 

The article explained that Patrick was practicing by drawing topics from a box of fortune cookies.

 

Club meetings of Toastmasters International have a one-to-two-minute impromptu speaking portion called Table Topics. There is another article by Elaine Lung at District 101 Toastmasters on January 9, 2022 titled Impromptu Speaking: It’s Easier Than You Think. She mentions several possible speech structures, and the ten-minute version for Guinness can use similar ones.

 

Back on September 22, 2010 I blogged about a simple way to keep track of an impromptu speech in a post titled Getting a hand on your impromptu speech. That ‘Handi-speech’ techniques by Lori Gracey also is discussed here and here.

 

My impression of the world record trophy was adapted from one at Openclipart.  

 

My second Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 2020 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article by Kate McCLare titled True Lies, which discusses Tall Tales speech contests. On August 23, 2020 I blogged about My Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest. That first speech came in third at Pioneer Club. This year I tried a Tall Tale contest speech again, and got further, as shown above. My title was Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny? This speech had lots of deadpan humor and numerous props.

 

The first time I gave it was on February 22, 2023 at Pioneer Club. No one else competed, so I won by default. I went on to the Area 3 contest on March 25, 2023 and won (over one other contestant). For feedback I gave it again on April 5, 2023 at Pioneer Club. Then, in the Division A contest on April 15 I competed again, but came in fourth out of four, and only received a Certificate of Participation.

 

This speech topic goes way back on my blog. It begins on June 30, 2008 with a post titled Daddy, where do “Table Topics” questions come from? The full story first shows up on September 27, 2008 in another post titled Tales of the Table Topics Bunny and the Jackalope. In that version the back story for the Table Topics Bunny included eight children (four girls and four boys). A cartoon of the bunny carrying a basket of questions appeared almost a decade later, in yet another post on February 24, 2018 titled Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

For this year, I brought the number of bunny girls and boys up to five of each, so I could count them off on the fingers of each hand. One of the girls plays the role of the Energizer Bunny in TV commercials.

 

For the first version at Pioneer Club the only props were a couple of sheets of paper with a cartoon image of the Table Topics Bunny and one of the Energizer Bunny. Then I gave the speech to the Surpassing Excellence Academy advanced club on Zoom. My audience suggested that I instead needed to ‘be the Bunny’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I went to the Zurchers party store in Boise, and bought both blue and pink bunny ears. I borrowed a woven basket from my wife. White half-inch thick insulation foam was made into a stack of Table Topics Questions. On eBay I got some 10” wide pink gag sunglasses. At the Idaho Youth Ranch I got a 13” diameter cylindrical carboard box, which I spray painted white and fluorescent pink to make a drum. My drum stick actually was an inflatable microphone, which I had blogged about in a post on October 1, 2021 titled Inexpensive inflatable props for speeches. All those props are shown above. 

 

The final script [with prop use shown in brackets] is as follows:    

 

Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

Fellow Toastmasters. If you have small children, then eventually you will get asked:

 “Daddy, where do Table Topics Questions come from?”

 

We reply that the Table Topics Bunny brings them. [Put on blue bunny ears]. February 22nd is the birthday of Toastmasters founder, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley. That is when the Table Topics Bunny hops by and visits the homes of lucky Toastmasters. The Bunny reaches into his big basket, and leaves them a stack of questions. [Pick up basket, walk across stage, and pull out a stack of questions].There are more than enough to last for the whole year. When I looked in my office that morning, I found a new pile on my credenza.

 

The Table Topics Bunny is named Harvey, and his wife is Barbie. They live near San Diego and are proud of all ten of their children. The five blue boy bunnies are Bruce, George, John, Paul, and Ringo. [Take off blue bunny ears, and put on pink bunny ears]. The five pink girl bunnies are Amy, Britney, Lindsey, Miley, and Taylor. Britney plays a role in TV commercials that is much better known than the Table Topics Bunny.

 

Bruce originally was chosen as a famous mascot, the Energizer Bunny. Then lawyers for an ice cream maker objected. They said WE had trademarked a Blue Bunny for OUR advertising back in 1935, and YOU can’t have one too. Bruce suggested that they use his pink sister Britney instead. She got the job, but due to an oversight the ad copy never was fixed to read that SHE just keeps on going. [Put on pink prop sunglasses].

 

Britney learned to play the bass drum for her junior high school marching band. The sandals, shades, and attitude came later in high school when she started to hang out with the bad beach bunnies. Then Britney headed up to Hollywood to become a singer and actress. [Pick up drum and drumstick, and walk across stage beating the drum].  She just keeps going and going because she has stimulant abuse issues with diet pills. Reportedly Britney again is in rehab somewhere near the Energizer headquarters in St. Louis.

[Take off pink bunny ears, and put on blue bunny ears]. What do you think of the Table Topics Bunny? Does he sound like a Tall Tale? Was he just made up to put something in the calendar between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?

 

Some of you want to ask why you weren’t visited by the Table Topics Bunny. That’s simple. Think about another holiday. Do you remember the Peanuts Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? Just like the Great Pumpkin, you have to sincerely believe in the Table Topics Bunny. Otherwise, he won’t visit you. So, do you truly, sincerely, believe? Fellow Toastmasters.

 

Toastmasters International’s 2022 World Championship of Public Speaking

 

On August 20, 2022 Toastmasters International held the finals for their world championship. Results were announced via a press release on August 22, 2022 titled Zimbabwean software engineer living in Poland wins Toastmasters’ 2022 World Championship of Public Speaking.

 

Cyril Junior Dim won with his speech titled Ndini, which means “this is me.” You can watch it on YouTube. Alexandre Matte took second place with his speech, Missing Ingredient, which you can watch on YouTube. Mas Mahathir Bin Mohamad took third place with his speech, Two Gifts, which you can watch on YouTube.

 

For both the winning and third-place speeches the video has a relatively wide-angle (and tall) format, with the frame being nine or ten times the height of the speaker’s head. For the second-place speech the video has a relatively narrow format, with the frame being only about 2.3 times the height of the speaker’s head.

 

According to the rule book for this contest, the winner of the World Championship is not eligible to compete in the International Contest again at any level.

 

An article at Toastmasters 101 on October 15, 2020 titled Toastmasters Speech Contest: Are you in? discusses winning speeches:

 

“The rule book says that any type of speech is acceptable for the international speech contest.  However, it’s one of those ‘everybody knows’ rules that only inspirational speeches make it to the top level.  While the style of speech for that contest has changed over the years – as it should – it gets a lot of negative comments from people who don’t like the style that it developed into in the past 20 years or so.  Non-Toastmasters criticize the content – bland, lacking any substance – and the styles – clownish, or over-acted.  I’ve spoken with some people who don’t like Toastmasters because they think that’s what Toastmasters wants its speakers to sound like.”

 

Improving oratory skills of medical residents using an American Idol presentation competition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in July 2018 there was a seven-page article by David A. Hill et al. in Cureus magazine titled Improving Oratory Skills: An “American Idol” Presentation Competition for Residents. They ran a competition between seven senior residents with four sessions. The first session was a five-minute discussion limited to five PowerPoint slides. The second was a six-minute presentation limited to six PowerPoint slides. The top four went on to the next round. The third was a seven-minute presentation limited to seven PowerPoint slides. The fourth and final presentation was for fifteen minutes limited to fifteen PowerPoint slides. Twenty-six audience members filled out a baseline survey before the competition began, and nineteen filled out a survey after the fourth presentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Survey results for how well the presenters communicated are shown above in a bar chart. Before the competition only 4% were rated very effective; after the competition 22% were rated very effective. Before the competition 62% were rated effective; after the competition 73% were rated effective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Survey results for whether the slides were understandable are shown above in a second bar chart. Before the competition only 8% were rated very understandable; after the competition 52% were rated very understandable. Before the competition 54% were rated quite understandable; after the competition 42% were rated quite understandable.

 

A cartoon of a medical presenter was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Verity Price won the 2021 World Championship of Public Speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finale of a huge speech contest is one of the featured events at the annual convention of Toastmasters International. On August 30, 2021 there is a press release titled Cape Town resident wins Toastmasters’ 2021 World Championship of Public Speaking. The press release includes YouTube links to her winning speech and the second and third place speeches.

 

At the Toastmasters International web site you can find both the Judge’s Guide and Ballot with the criteria used for scoring, and the Speech Contest Rulebook.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

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.  

 

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.

 

My Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest

At our August 19, 2020 Zoom meeting Pioneer Toastmasters Club held a Tall Tales Speech Contest. I was one of three contestants and came in third. A Tall Tales speech is nominally three to five minutes long (but can run thirty seconds over or under those limits). Its subject should have a theme or plot, and be of a highly exaggerated, improbable nature. My contest speech about the stealthiest cover band in the country was cut down from a 5 to 7 minute humorous speech I had given way back in 2010. I still had some props based on thrift store purchases. Here is the script:

This story is absolutely true, like all the stories I tell you. I heard in Pittsburgh from a friend of Stan Ruckzynski. You’ve never heard of the Ruczynski brothers or their rock and roll band from Youngstown, Ohio. And you never heard them play. They only released one record on their own label. But that’s all right with them. They didn’t have to play to make money. But you probably have heard the name of their band hundreds of times - without ever realizing it.

The four Ruczynski brothers started a band called the Kielbasa Brothers in the late sixties. A kielbasa is a big, long Polish sausage. Their day jobs were making steel pipe at the Youngstown Sheet and Tube mill. Theo played guitar, Leo played bass, Dan played keyboards, and Stan played drums. Every weekend they played covers, versions of other people’s songs. Their gigs were in bars from Pittsburgh to Wheeling. But they never made enough money to quit their day jobs.

In 1975 Theo decided to get advice from the wisest man in the family. Their old uncle Thaddeus, or Tad, worked as an attorney for the Democratic political machine over in Pittsburgh. It started running things back in the mid 30’s and kept on going. They and Tad had their fingers in everything and knew how to make money. Tad listened to Theo and told him to change how you think. You need to become a record company, not just a band. Theo asked how will that help?

Tad explained, “We rename the band Dozens More. Then we trademark and copyright it. We start our own record company and release an album on an LP record. Every night I see TV ads for collections of golden oldies. They all say things like contains ‘Rock around the clock’, ‘ Leader of the pack’ and dozens more. Every time someone runs an ad that says the magic phrase Dozens More I send them an angry letter. It says they damaged us by infringing our trademark and copyright. I tell them they need to change their commercial to remove that phrase. Otherwise we’re going to sue them here in Pittsburgh.” When they ask around, they’ll find they can’t win. I play poker or golf with every judge in town. After a while I will agree to instead settle for some money, provided they don’t tell anyone else. Paying us will be cheaper and easier.

September 19, 1977 was Black Monday in Youngstown. That day Sheet and Tube closed the mill. They laid off 5000 people including all four brothers. That fall lots of Youngstown residents were sitting at home all day watching TV. The difference was that the Ruczynski brothers got paid from doing it. Each brother watched a different network to check out the commercials.

Record companies all over the country and the alphabet tripped over their trademark. Folks like: Atlantic, Columbia, Decca, Mercury, Vanguard, and Warner Brothers. Uncle Tad threatened to sue them all. Enough money rolled in so the brothers never worried about losing their homes. They kept changing formats to keep the album alive. There was a 8-track, and then a cassette, and finally a CD.

Their uncle said that when you pick a few dollars (just a tad) out of enough pockets it adds up to a very nice living. Things picked up further when record companies started running thirty minute long infomercials on late night TV. They definitely didn’t want to redo them. Eventually the story about how Dozens More operated leaked onto the WorldWide Web and blew their cover. But for two decades they were the stealthiest cover band in the country.

  

Very little of that story is true. There never ever was a band called Dozens More. But there really was a guy named Ruckzynski in the Air Force Reserve unit I belonged to in Pittsburgh.

The idea is based on the concepts of a copyright troll and a trademark troll. You do need to have a product to keep a trademark alive. I was making fun of how in trademark law there can be absurdly broad claims. For example, Amstar Corporation, who owned the Domino Sugar trademark once sued Domino’s Pizza to keep them from also trademarking a Domino.  

The image of Jack and the Beanstalk is from a WPA poster at the Library of Congress.

Ryan Avery won the 2012 Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking

In a press release on Saturday Toastmasters International announced that Ryan Avery had won. He is 25 and from Portland, Oregon. Ryan is the youngest person to win the contest. (Last year I blogged about how in 1970 Stephen D. Boyd had won at age 26).  You can watch Ryan's winning speech here on YouTube. As is shown above, the contest process is a very large pyramid.

Is this a real world championship, or is it as limited as the World Series of Major League Baseball, which has 29 teams from the United States and just one team from Canada?

It’s a lot closer to a real world championship! Of the 86 semifinalists, 57 came from the United States, but there also were 4 from Australia, 7 from Canada, and one each from:

Bahamas
Barbados
China
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
New Zealand
Philippines
Portugal
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Taiwan
United Arab Emirates

Previous winners of the Toastmasters World Championship are a less diverse bunch. There have only been ten from outside the United States: 3 from Australia, 4 from Canada, one from Ireland, and one from New Zealand.