Calling an elephant a zebra doesn’t make it the other animal

The lowest level of executive competence we should accept from a President is that he manages to keep the federal government running. Instead our present for Christmas from Donald J. Trump was a partial shutdown.

On Saturday he hit a new low. An article at CNN was titled Trump told lawmakers he prefers word ‘strike’ to government shutdown, sources say. Another article at The Hill was titled Trump, in a profanity-laced meeting with lawmakers, said he preferred ‘strike’ to refer to government shutdown: reports.

That’s fraudulent language. Calling an elephant a zebra doesn’t magically turn it into the other animal.

How shallow research will destroy your credibility

Shallow research can destroy your credibility. Be careful to check your references. When you give a link to a survey with results that belie what you just said in the text of an article, people will decide you simply do not know what you are talking about.

On December 26, 2018 there was an article by Jason Unrau at the Atlanta Small Business Network titled Tips to master public speaking. His second and third sentences said:

“It’s no surprise that speaking in public is one of the top fears for Americans, according to the Chapman University Survey on American Fears. More than 26 percent of the population reports being afraid to speak in public.”

When you click his link to the Chapman Survey blog post titled America’s Top Fears 2018 you won’t find public speaking in their graphic with the Top 10 Fears of 2018. It’s not in the Top 20 or even the Top 50. Looking at their Complete List of Fears it’s listed as #59 out of 94. Calling it a top fear is quite misleading. (26.2% were Afraid or Very Afraid of public speaking).    

On December 6, 2018 there was another article by Shelley Baur at LinkedIn Pulse titled Who’s still afraid of public speaking? She opened with:

“Over the years, public speaking has fallen from being the #1 fear on the planet. Recent research by Chapman University says public speaking now ranks #29 on the list, with 26.2% still being fearful of public speaking. Know anyone still in that situation?”

Shelley said Chapman ranked it at #29 instead of #59 (for 2018). But as far as I know, no one really has ever surveyed the whole planet. But back on April 9, 2012 I blogged about how Poll by Reader's Digest Canada found fear of public speaking wasn't ranked first in 15 of 16 countries.surveyed. For the U.S., back in 2001 a Gallup Poll already had ranked public speaking at #2 rather than #1. Their article was titled Snakes top list of Americans’ fears. Back on October 19, 2018 I blogged that You probably won’t hear public speaking coaches discuss the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears, and noted it really was ranked as #60 of 95 fears.

   

On December 5, 2018 there was yet another article by Tatyana Meshcheryakova at Dumb Little Man titled How to thrive at public speaking. Her third paragraph said:

“Public speaking regularly pops up on the top of most-feared lists in the U.S. A few years ago, the annual Chapman Survey of American Fears reported that 25% of responders reported being afraid or very afraid of public speaking.”

When you click her link to the Chapman Survey blog post titled America’s Top Fears 2017 you won’t find public speaking in their graphic with the Top 10 Fears of 2017. It’s not in the Top 20 or even the Top 50. Looking at their Complete List of Fears it’s listed as #52 out of 80. Calling it the top fear is quite misleading. And 20.0% were Afraid or Very Afraid of public speaking, not 25%! On October 14, 2017 I blogged about What do the most Americans fear? The fourth Chapman Survey on American Fears, and being innumerate. I found public speaking instead really was was #51 out of 81 fears, and feared by 23.3%.

On December 3, 2018 there was still another article by Sue Shellenbarger at The Wall Street Journal titled How to overcome your terror of making an off-the-cuff speech. Although it otherwise was excellent,

-->her second paragraph said:

“Impromptu pitches, toasts and talks outnumber planned presentations in the workplace. Such challenges strike terror in the hearts of one in four Americans, making them more daunting than snakes, stalkers, or spiders, according to Chapman University’s annual fear survey.”

Her claim one in four are terrified is based on the same 26.2% mentioned previously - but that is a sum for Very Afraid and Afraid. Sue was too lazy to look up the relevant data – for Very Afraid only (on page 60). For Very Afraid it is 10.5%, for Afraid it is 15.7%, for Slightly Afraid it is 32.1%, and for Not Afraid it is 41.4%. (The final 0.3% is blank). What she reported is too large by a factor of 26.2/10.5 or 2.5. Only one in ten Americans actually are terrified. Matt Abrahams also put that article in a post on his No Freaking Speaking blog with the same title. He also should have known better.

Going ‘postal’ about delivery vehicles

Topics for speeches are around in your neighborhood.  I was used to seeing the U.S. Postal Service bring mail and packages in compact right-hand-drive delivery trucks -  venerable Grumman LLVs (long life vehicles), as shown above. Before Christmas I happened to look out a front window to instead see them deliver a package to my door from a tiny Subaru Sambar microvan. What had changed? The LLV is a relatively old design, but the USPS still has about 100,000 of them. They have been looking at replacing the whole fleet, but still have not decided what should come next.

Canada Post also uses the LLV, but in 2010 they decided to replace it with the Ford Transit Connect (front views of both are shown above). The Transit Connect is a compact cargo van designed by Ford in Europe. It is built in Turkey and Spain, and was cleverly imported to the U.S. as a passenger vehicle. An article in the Chicago Tribune on July 9, 2018 described Ford’s creative efforts to avoid $250 million in ‘chicken tax’ tariffs under scrutiny.

What about the big brown package delivery competition? United Parcel Service (UPS) has a whole series of delivery trucks (known in their jargon as package cars) specially built for them. Two car types are shown above. Some package cars have translucent white fiberglass roofs, so their interior cargo area is illuminated by sunlight. An article by Mack Hogan at Jalopnik on July 6, 2018 discussed how I don’t care how rich you are, you can’t buy a UPS truck.

Images of an LLV, LLV and Transit Connect, and UPS package cars all came from Wikimedia Commons.

In 2019 only YOU can prevent bad presentations

I can’t bear bad presentations. Once again for the new year, I’m showing a set of five images on that topic. I previously did this in 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

There is no shortage of resolutions for this new year. At Inc. on December 26, 2018 Fia Fasbinder had an article that said to Ignite Your Speaking Skills in 2019 With These 3 New Year’s Resolutions:

1]  Improve your practice

2]  Push yourself

3]  Perform with presence

Also, on December 30, 2018 at his Manner of Speaking blog John Zimmer had a post with Five Public Speaking Resolutions for 2019:

1) Arrive at least one hour before you are scheduled to speak.

2) Seek out speaking situations that make you uncomfortable.

3) Give a presentation without slides.

4) Analyze other people’s speeches and presentations.

5) Tell more stories.

The image of a bear, painting of a dentist, cartoon woman, cartoon man, and painting of a woman all came from Wikimedia Commons. 

Why list 19 reasons rather than 20?

It’s the very end of the year. Time to make resolutions for next year, or (sigh) to look at how we did with our goals for this year. At Enrepreneur on December 27, 2018 I saw an article by internet marketer Ayodeji Onibalusi titled 19 Reasons you did not achieve any of your goals this year. His depressing reasons are that:

1]   You lack consistency.

2]   You fail to write out your plans.

3]   You court complacency.

4]   You don’t think big enough.

5]   You make too much noise about your goals.

6]   You’re constantly in the wrong company.

7]   You hate being corrected.

8]   You value praises over constructive criticism.

9]   You micro-manage everything.

10] You give others too much of yourself.

11] You wait too long to make corrections.

12] People’s opinions are important to you.

13] Your parents still advise you.

14] You’ve always done things the same way.

15] You’re a jack of all trades.

16] You don’t take care of your body.

17] You do not have a team.

18] You make comparisons.

19] You fail to act.

His marketing education must have omitted the topic of choosing list lengths for articles. Why did he stop his list at 19 items (fail to act) rather than going on to 20? Twenty is a much more interesting and popular number. We can easily see this by putting the phrase “N reasons” into the Ngram Viewer at Google Books, as is shown above. (Click on it for a larger, clearer view). When we focus on the numbers for the year 2000, we see that 20 items would be 2.5 times as popular as 19. 10 would be 8.3 times as popular, and even 15 would be 1.7 times as popular as 19.

The differences are even more striking for the phrase “Top M,” as shown above. But this is nothing new. Back on December 12, 2009 I had blogged about how Almost nobody wants to see your Top 15 list: please use either a Top 10 or a Top 20 list. My results from Google searches also are shown, and a Top 20 list was 30 times as popular as a Top 19 list. 

When setting goals, it’s useful to keep the acronym SMART in mind.

   

Our 26-hour CenturyLink internet outage

When I sat down at my iMac early on the morning of December 27th our internet service was down. This happens a few times each year. Usually just unplugging and replugging our CenturyLink modem restores it in a few minutes. Not this time. I tried calling their tech service, got put on hold and then hung up on.

It turned out things were way more serious than usual. Service wasn’t restored for 26 hours. No research or blog post for that day. Our local TV evening news mentioned that the problem was more than statewide. An Idaho Statesman article was titled Widespread CenturyLink outage shuts down phone services at Idaho prisons, education dept. An Idaho Press article was titled Nationwide internet outage affects CenturyLink customers. A USA Today article was titled CenturyLink outage knocks out 911 calls, hospital’s patient records.

The big side effect of losing the internet was losing our feed for watching Netflix. Elaine and I went back to reading books from our local public library. I had watched the first half hour of Springsteen on Broadway (see YouTube trailer) and was looking forward to seeing the other two hours.

The vintage test pattern image came from Wikimedia Commons.

Table Topics - After that, you might need this

A few days ago I saw two television commercials for Boise businesses. One was for the recently opened Altitude Trampoline Park. It was immediately followed by one for Advantage Spine and Disc. What a thoughtful pairing! First you show where to go to injure my back, and then you show me where to go to get it treated.

That got me thinking about other possible commercial pairings that could be in Table Topics questions.

A second pair is foods with hot peppers (like Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell) and antacids (Tums or Rolaids).

A third pair is saloons and bail bonds (which you need if you get caught driving home after drinking).

Images of a trampoline, crutches, a chili pepper, a saloon, and bail bonds all came from Wikimedia Commons.