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.

 

It is pretty, but does it work?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new books shelf at my friendly local public library has a big, long, heavy, coffee-table book titled 1000 Design Classics (published in 2022). I borrowed it, and mostly enjoyed looking through their pictures and brief descriptions. Those items are listed in chronological order. There are many chairs. As shown above, there were some clunkers in it – items that are pretty but did not work well. One was the Zig-Zag chair (on page 120), designed by Gerrit Rietveld and also shown in silhouette on the cover. It’s silly because we don’t have flat bottoms. That chair needs a cushion added to make it functional, unlike the Mezzadro chair (on page 290) designed by Achille Castiglioni using the form-fitting seat from a tractor.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 1941 Chemex Coffemaker (page 167) is another clunker. The one-piece glass double-cone design  is no better than the 1937 Melitta Cone Filter holder (on page 137) meant to sit atop a separate receptacle. The Chemex is hard to clean. You need a long bottle brush.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most poorly chosen item in the book (on page 108) is the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship filled with flammable hydrogen gas rather than inert heluim. It first flew on March 4, 1936, but only flew 63 times before famously being destroyed by a fire (as shown above) during a landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. Its predecessor, the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, had the first transatlantic passenger service, and flew 590 times from 1928 to 1937.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another questionable choice (on page 183) is the 1946 Saab 92 car. Saab primarily was an aircraft company, and would better have been represented by their 1955 Saab 35 Draken double-delta jet fighter-interceptor (shown above).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet another poor choice is the 1949 de Havilland DH 106 Comet jet airliner (page 205). Three were lost in its first year of airline service, and the entire fleet grounded. Tests revealed the fuselage was subject to fatigue failure just from repeated pressurization. The aircraft had to be redesigned as the Comet 4 (shown above). Only 114 ever were built. Curiously there was a 1948 novel by Nevil Shute titled No Highway about an airliner called the Rutland Reindeer whose tail failed by fatigue. In 1951 it became a movie titled No Highway in the Sky.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

De Havilland should instead have been represented by their much more popular World War II Mosquito, a 400 mph, plywood, twin-engine fighter and bomber (shown above). 7,781 were built.

   

Looking at nature with binoculars and spotting scopes, or even monoculars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 31, 2022 I blogged about Julia Zarankin’s 2020 memoir, Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder, in a post titled Birds and a world full of wonder. Binoculars (as shown above: a green 10x50 and a gray 10x22) are one of the basic tools used by birders. On page 33 she mentions that a widowed family friend loaned her late husband’s binoculars. But then she had a look through some expensive ones. On page 222 she describes going to B&H in New York City to try out and then purchase an over thousand-dollar Zeiss Conquest HD.  

 

There is a pair of recent articles on binoculars at the All About Birds web site. One on December 4, 2022 is titled How to Choose Binoculars: Our Testing Tips, and another on December 7, 2022 is titled The Cornell Lab Review: Affordable Full-Size 8x42 Binoculars. Before you get that far, and contemplate spending $300 to $500, you should look at a book, like the 2009 one by Laura Erickson titled The Bird Watching Answer Book. On page 43 in chapter 2 she discusses choosing binoculars. In the phrase 8x42 the magnification is 8X, and the objective lens diameter is 42 mm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image brightness is proportional to the lens area (pi times the radius squared), as shown above in a table. My serious 10x50 has a lens area of 1963 square mm, over five times the 380 for that compact 10x22. But that compact one only weighs 6.4 oz, and it will fit in my pants pocket. Compare with the four times heavier green 27.4 oz one that needs to hang around my neck. The compact gets taken along for summer vacation viewing on sunny days.

 

There is a bewildering variety of binoculars for sale. Before buying, you can visit an outdoor store like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops and try looking through a bunch of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At All About Birds there is another pair of articles: one on April 6, 2007 about How to Choose a Spotting Scope, and a second on January 15, 2008 titled Scope Quest 2008: Our Review of Spotting Scopes. On page 225 of her book Julia mentions that she needed to begin a weight-training program before considering trying to tote around a spotting scope. My decade-old 60mm diameter LOMO Astele (shown above) weighs 3 pounds, but the Manfrotto 190 tripod and 410 geared head for it weigh another 8 pounds. (My scope also has a red dot finderscope). I was able to easily carry the tripod and head for a quarter mile and photograph balloons with my digital SLR camera, as described in my August 30, 2012 blog post titled After all… tomorrow is another day.

 

Craigslist is an option for buying used binoculars or scopes. I found my green 10x50 binoculars at a local pawn shop. Here in Boise we have lots of firearms enthusiasts, so there usually are some spotting scopes listed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monoculars are another inexpensive option for looking at nature. As shown above, I have a 4 oz. LOMO 10x30 Little Mak (Matsukov pocket telescope) which I bought a decade ago. It goes in my car or my vacation backpack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also can get a tiny 8x20 pocket monocular, like the Cstar one shown above. Similar ones only are about $12 at Amazon or eBay. It will easily fit in a shirt or blouse pocket, and is decent enough for glimpsing objects on a sunny day. Remember, the best optic is the one you have with you!  

 

What is the future of speechwriting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Pro Rhetoric web site there is an excellent, long, and very serious article by Boe Workman on October 22, 2022 titled Writers of the Lost Art: A Locknote Address on the Future of Speechwriting. That article also has just appeared in the December 2022 issue of Vital Speeches of the Day, on pages 295 to 301 with a different title. He talks at length about the nature of rhetoric and the rhetorical process. Boe says to shape the future we should:

 

Embrace Disruption

Think About Our Purpose and Role

Embrace ‘Rhetorical Perspective’

 

He concludes (read the original for his quotes) :

 

“As a speechwriter, I believe in the power of rhetoric to initiate and energize ideas, and in the principle of public discourse to illuminate, refine and resolve public issues….

 

As a people, our values, aspirations, wildest dreams and even our fears must be communicated before they can be acted upon.  Rhetoric does that.  What otherwise may be vague, or misinterpreted, or even imperceptible is made concrete and actionable through rhetoric….

 

Speeches are the artifacts of humankind’s thoughts and visions; hopes and fears. Humans are by our very nature constantly seeking to influence others and are influenced by others. This isn’t necessarily good or bad – it simply is – and will continue to be.

 

As speechwriters, very few of us will have ‘a life at the edge of history’ as Ted Sorensen did. But we all have an important role to play in our little corner of it – practicing rhetoric to influence, convince and persuade – helping leaders lead.

 

What we do is fundamental and timeless: we practice rhetoric to help humanity in crisis find words to guide itself.

 

And that, my fellow speechwriters, is an art that will never be lost.”

 

An image of Gerald Ford writing came from the Library of Congress.

 

Celebrating a milestone of 2,400 blog posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I reached a milestone of 2,400 posts on this blog. In early December I realized that I was approaching it, so I posted two-dozen times to get there in 2022. My blog has been running for 14.6 years, averaging 164 posts per year, or 13.7 per month. There are a total of 1,919,157 page views, which averages to 360 per day. In December 2022 there are 10,070 or 325 per day.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first graphic really has 2400 ‘fence posts,’ taken from a vertical one at Openclipart and assembled via PowerPoint starting with groups of five, as shown above.  

 

My Top Ten most popular posts, their dates, and relative rankings are:

 

The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? 

October 27, 2009 [100% =  22,200]

 

Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation

July 5, 2009 [99.1% =  22,000]

 

Is flip-chart a racist term?

February 6, 2019 [55.0% = 12,200]

 

How can you easily draw dotted chalk lines on a blackboard? 

December 29, 2011 [37.3% = 8,290]

 

Does homeopathic Argentum nitricum reduce anxiety?

December 11, 2009 [28.1% = 6,240]

 

Acronyms – LOL, LMAO, and LMFAO

July 22, 2018 [24.2% = 5,380]

 

Falling in love and Table Topics questions

February 12, 2018 [17.7% = 3,930]

 

Herbal remedies for anxiety

September 18, 2009 [16.5% = 3,660]

 

25 questions for Table Topics from Claire Lew

January 27, 2018 [15.8% = 3,510]

 

Timing lights for speakers

January 11, 2011 [15.6% = 3,460]

 

Two posts are about Table Topics - the impromptu speaking section in a Toastmasters club meeting.