A Top Ten List after 700 blog posts

After just over 700 posts, it’s time once again to look back at the ten most popular posts of all time for this blog. I’m listing how they rank in percent relative to the most popular one. Also, I’m listing how they ranked last time after 600 posts. If you want to see more recent posts on a topic, just click on a label after you click on the link to one of the posts. 

At #1 (with 6084 views) is a post from October 27, 2009 that discussed The 14 Worst Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?

At #2 (50.6%), from August 9, 2010, is The power of brief speeches: World War I and the Four Minute Men.

At #3 (50.5%), from December 11, 2009, is Does homeopathic Argentum Nitricum reduce anxiety?. After 600 posts it was ranked #4.

At #4 (31.4%), from December 29, 2011, is How can you easily draw dotted chalk lines on a blackboard? After 600 posts it was ranked #8.

At #5 (29.3%), from January 11, 2011, is Timing lights for speakers. After 600 posts it was ranked #7. This post introduced my Timing Tiles, which were also discussed here on March 1st. 

At #6 (25.8%), from August 13, 2010, is Add your unique perspective to a topic. After 600 posts it was ranked #3.

At #7 (24.9%), from July 5, 2009, is Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation. After 600 posts it was ranked #6.

At #8 (21.7%), from February 8, 2009, is Finding topics for speeches. After 600 posts it was ranked #5.

At #9 (11.6%), from November 5, 2010 is Do you like stealth raisins? After 600 posts it also was ranked at #9. 

At #10 (10.5%), from May 19, 2011, is America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking - that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey. It wasn’t on the top ten after 600 posts.

Slides were used as visual aids long before PowerPoint

Last Wednesday’s blog post at Duarte, Back to the Future: Slides Before PowerPoint,  by Paula Tesch took me on a trip down memory lane. She reminded us that:

“Before there was PowerPoint, there were slides. Real ones. They were tiny, and tactile, and delicate, and kind of delightful.”

Paula was describing 2x2” slides produced using 35mm film. They were one of the the dominant visual aids for about a half century, from 1955 to 2005. But, they were preceded by larger 3.5x4”  lantern slides, which were used for about a century, from 1855 to 1955. 

A Wikipedia article about slide libraries contains a timeline for both of these visual aids, and a web page at the Library of Congress web site briefly describes the history and manufacture of lantern slides.

Suppose that you were trying to describe how coal bunkers on a famous steamship like the ocean liner RMS Mauretania were being built in 1905 by riveting together steel plates. A single lantern slide, like the one shown above from the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, was worth literally a thousand words.

Sometimes color even was added to lantern slides by hand tinting, like this 1922 view of a garden. 

When I was a child, my father had an Argus C3 35mm camera. I remember watching Kodachrome color slide shows of family vacations and other occasions. Later I owned a series of 35mm single lens reflex cameras (the last being a Nikon F3).

I still have a collection of binders with vinyl pages full of slides that could be held up in front of a window or lamp, and viewed with a loupe or a linen tester. Planning a presentation began with review of existing slides using a slide sorter or light box. 

Production of new 35mm slides for presentations at technical meetings was a long and painful process. Typically it began at least a month earlier. For example, the applied metallurgical research slide shown above (from two decades ago) contains a drawing (borrowed from a technical report) and three optical microscope photographs. The yellow chart area and orange background were self-adhesive plastic overlays added to the drawing. Each photograph was cut to size and then had a magnification scale marker added to it. Then the final artwork was photographed, and the slides came back from processing a week later.  

Do I miss this long, convoluted analog set of processes? Not at all! Drag and drop digital editing in PowerPoint (or Keynote) is much faster and less stressful.

Everybody thinks that I’m a fraud!

Today’s excellent Savage Chickens cartoon illustrates a common cognitive bias called the Illusion of Transparency - that others can see our mental state.

Relax! They don't really think that you are a fraud, and can't even tell if you are nervous. So, as Dave Paradi said a couple weeks ago don’t start with an apology.

Fairy tales in my blog spam folder from four turkeys

Some people will comment almost anything to try and get a link from this blog to their commercial web site. Here are some examples from the past six months. (Of course, any blog built in Google Blogger runs just fine with Internet Explorer. Why wouldn’t it?)

“Hello, neat post. There is an issue together with your web site in Internet Explorer, could check this. IE nonetheless is the market chief and a big element of folks will leave out your wonderful writing due to this problem. My web site is...”

“Hmm is anyone else having problems with the pictures on this blog loading? I’m trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. My web site:...”

“Hi, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your site in Ie it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!...”

“Have you ever considered about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. However think of if you added some great photos or video clips to give your posts more ‘pop’! Your content is excellent but with pics and videos, this site could definitely be one of the greatest in its field. Great blog! Look at my homepage...”

The sliced turkey spam and can were posted by Carol Spears on Wikimedia Commons.

Three sensational claims in just one paragraph!!!

Back in April I blogged about encountering articles from content mills. Last month I found one with an amazing first paragraph. That article was written by Jay (A.) Jenkin and published on April 23, 2010. On Articlebase it was titled Speaking with confidence, while on Ezine Articles it was titled Speaking to a crowd with confidence. The first paragraph says:

“There is no doubt about it: speaking in front of people is one of our culture's biggest fears. A recent study asked a group of United States Air Force pilots, guys who can land a multi-million dollar fighter jet on an aircraft carrier at night without breaking a sweat, what their greatest fear was. Their answer? Public speaking. Another study found that most people would rather be in the coffin at a funeral than up at the pulpit giving the eulogy. All in all, only 5% of Americans are ready and willing to command the public platform.”

His first claim begins with the second sentence - there was a survey of pilots about their fears. I looked around on Google and the databases at my public library and could not find it. But, Air Force pilots don’t land fighters on aircraft carriers. Naval aviators do, as many who saw the movie Top Gun will recall. The Navy already had called the guys who took ships into ports or other confined zone pilots. To avoid confusion they called their fliers aviators. (An earlier article by Jenkin claimed the survey was on combat fighter pilots).

The fifth sentence has his second claim - that there was a study which said people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. That just was a two-decade old Jerry Seinfeld comedy routine, not a study.

The last sentence has his third claim that only 5% of Americans are ready and willing to step up and speak. It’s just a restatement of the silly claim that 95% fear speaking - a pandemic of fear which I’ve debunked before. So, all three claims are bogus.

The Puck cartoon came from back in 1897!

“Well, basically”, “As you can see” and other worn out filler phrases

Watching a video recording of your speech will help catch unintended filler phrases. A common one is opening sentences with:

“Well, basically...”

Back in 2001 Stuart Vail lamented that it had become the speech crutch of the 90s. Forty years ago there was a Monty Python comedy sketch with John Cleese portraying the chairman of the British Well Basically Club.  

On October 27th at his excellent Business School Presenting web site Professor Stanley K. Ridgely discussed A Horrid Presentation Pathology - clicking on a cluttered PowerPoint slide and then glibly proclaiming:

“As you can see”

when the audience can’t really see what the presenter had in mind at all. Sometimes the  slide contains part of an Excel spreadsheet, or even an entire barely legible spreadsheet. That presenter might have needed ten minutes to discern patterns in that data, which he now assumes his audience can recognize instantly.  

On January 24th I blogged about a list of 46 Tired old phrases to use nevermore from back in 1915. It included two common ones still used by politicians:

“I point with pride” and “We view with alarm”

Survey by Accountemps reveals most Canadian workers are afraid of making errors on the job - and public speaking came third

In my last post on Tuesday I blogged about how an Accountemps survey reveals most workers are afraid of making errors on the job - and public speaking tied for fourth.

When I looked up other posts that referred to Accountemps, I found that they also had done another survey of 277 workers in Canada that was reported on October 25th.

The bar chart shown above compares results from this survey (in red) with those for the United States (in blue). Click on it to see a larger, clearer version. For Canadians, 29% feared making errors on the job (versus 28% in the US). Dealing with difficult customers or clients was feared by 17% (versus 18% in the US). Speaking in front of a group of people came third at 16% (versus a tie for fourth at 13% in the US). Conflicts with coworkers was feared by 14% and ranked fourth (versus 13% in the US). Conflicts with your manager was feared by 12% and ranked fifth (versus 15% and third in the US).

A post by Jenna Charlton at Workopolis.com titled What scares us the most at work? confused things by first linking to the US survey but then quoting three percentages from the Canadian survey.

The wood carving of three wise monkeys came from Wikimedia Commons.