Is the number one rule of communication a sandwich helix?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 25, 2024 there was an xkcd cartoon titled Sandwich Helix with the following dialogue:

 

Cueball:   Always remember the #1 rule of communication:

                  Sandwich Helix.

 

Ponytail: What does that mean?

 

Cueball:   Unfortunately the context has been lost.

                  But we know the message,

                  and that’s the important part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure what a sandwich helix is or why the context got lost. Perhaps, as shown above, one is made on spiral-sliced bread. The web page at Explain xkcd suggests that it is about the long-used Compliment Sandwich. When I looked at Google Books, I found an article from 1964 – a Special Report from the University of Kansas Governmental Research Center (page 33):

 

“Use the Sandwich Method. Slip your criticism or suggestion between two hunks of praise or compliments.”

 

What other rules for communication are number one in books? In a 2020 book by Rebecca C. Thompson titled Fire, Ice, and Physics: The Science of Game of Thrones, on Page 254 she said:

 

“I’ve spent my life working as a science communicator, and the number one rule in communication is to tell a story.”

 

And in another 2022 book by Illana Raia titled The Epic Mentor Guide on Page 166 she instead said that:

 

“The number one rule of communication is to know your audience”

 

The sandwich helix was Photoshopped from this image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Heritage interpretation with objects, images and text at the Idaho State Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources for visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies. Interpretation also includes writing and graphic design of exhibits and signs. The Idaho State Museum in Boise has excellent examples of exhibits. I visited it on November 16th.

 

The Origins exhibit on the ground floor introduces the state’s five federally recognized tribes. Permanent exhibits on the second floor include Idaho: The Land & Its People, divided into three regions as follows:

 

“Lakes and Forests: North Idaho

 

Learn the rich history of mining, forestry, and transportation and how some of Idaho’s natural resources are used around the world today. Watch a spark turn into the blaze that became the Big Burn of 1910, and how this historic fire continues to influence forest management today.

 

Mountains and Rivers: Central Idaho

 

Central Idaho’s mountains are a recreational paradise. Experience what it’s like to ride a chairlift up Mt. Baldy, or sit around a campfire where you’ll learn about the first group to urge protections for our wilderness areas.   

 

Deserts and Canyons: South Idaho

 

Discover the hard road travelers faced on the Oregon Trail, the challenges of developing agriculture in the desert, and Idaho’s atomic past and high-tech future. Take a virtual bike ride through historic Pocatello or downtown Boise.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entrances for those three regions are shown above, as is the next sign explaining North Idaho. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In north Idaho there is an explanatory sign and display about Logging Camp Life as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A display case about mining with an ore cart is shown above, as is another display in an alcove.

 

 

 

 

Signs on the left and right sides of the alcove are shown above.These organized displays and accompanying signs should inspire carefully organized speechwriting.

 

Jim Gaffigan heard there was a pinecone factory in Bend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though I am a seasoned citizen there always are things I have not noticed before. Recently I was watching a YouTube video of a Jim Gaffigan comedy routine telling a story about Pinecones scented with cinnamon. I’d never noticed them, but as shown above, I found bags of them on display outside of a Winco supermarket here in Boise. Jim started his monologue with:

 

“Occasionally I will perform in a city I’ve never been. I did a show recently in Bend, Oregon. Beautiful Bend, down there in the woods. And I had never been to Bend, Oregon, so I asked my Uber driver, I was like, ‘What is the industry? The industry here in Bend, Oregon’ He very quickly answered: ‘Pinecone Factory.’ Oh well, obviously he didn’t hear me. I don’t even know what question I’d have to ask to get Pinecone Factory as an answer.“

 

Then the driver tried to explain about around the holidays, when everyone buys their bags of pinecones. Jim replied that no, they don’t. But when he Googled, he found out about pinecones that smell of cinnamon. When I Googled, I found an article by Dylan J. Darling at the Bend Bulletin on January 31, 2020 titled Pine cone picking catching on. It explained that you could get a license for picking them in the Deschutes National Forest. Presumably scent gets added in the factory. You can also get them scented with vanilla! But I think pinecones just should smell like pine trees.

 

Getting an award for surviving the most boring meeting ever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday’s Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage (shown above) is titled The Award and is about surviving the most boring meeting ever.

 

How can you plan to not have a boring meeting? There is a brief article by Mithun A. Sridharan on page 6 of the January 2024 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled The 4Ps of Effective Meetings. Those four Ps are Purpose, Product, People, and Process.

 

And there is a 17-page pdf article at Northern Illinois University titled Planning a Great Meeting that originated at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation but is no longer on their website.

 

You do not really know the Gettysburg Address

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blog post by David Murray at Writing Boots on October 31, 2024 titled You Don’t Know the Gettysburg Address begins:

“The Gettysburg Address was not a ceremonial speech, inevitably bound for a marble wall. It was a strategy speech, designed to ‘convince a very skeptical public in the north that they should keep dying’ despite their doubts about a cause ‘that they didn’t particularly believe in,’ says legendary University of Chicago writing professor Larry McEnerney.”

 

There is a YouTube video of professor Larry McEnerney’s excellent lecture at the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association titled The Gettysburg Address, as You’ve Never Considered It Before. It is an hour and fifteen minutes long – and well worth watching for learning about that great speech. If you can’t spare all that time right now, I suggest you watch the last fifteen minutes which I have bookmarked here.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 35 minutes he talks about Lincoln’s use of coherence as shown above – going more specific: continent, nation, battlefield, portion, resting place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At an hour and eight minutes he discusses how dedicate yourself (the call to action) solves three problems.

 

The plaque of the address text came from here at Wikimedia Commons.  

 

I am not going to throw out my black plastic spatula

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Food Network on October 25, 2024 there is an article by Christine Byrne titled Why you might want to throw away your black plastic kitchen utensils and takeout containers. And there is another article by Kristin Toussaint at Fast Company on November 1, 2024 more emphatically titled Why you should get rid of your black plastic spatula immediately. But there is still another article by Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz at Slate on November 4, 2024 titled I’m not throwing away my black plastic spatula. Potentially toxic flame retardants are a possible problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz. The problem here is a difference between a hazard (a potential problem) and a risk (a real problem). Getting bit by a rabid unicorn is a hazard, but the risk is negligible. There is yet another article by Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine on July 5, 2023 titled Aspartame and Cancer that explains how these two concepts differ:

 

“The difference between hazard and risk is important to understand in terms of this research. A good analogy I often go to is – a shark in a tank is a hazard, meaning that it can potentially cause harm in the right circumstance. But as long as you don’t swim in the tank with the shark, the risk is zero. Something happening chemically may be a hazard, but we need to know how the substance is metabolized, will it get to the target tissue and in what dose, and what compensatory mechanisms are there? A potential hazard can be of zero risk depending on exposure.”

 

Some memories of the Air Force Reserve - for Veterans Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In spring 1972 I enlisted in the Air Force Reserve to be a medic - before the Army could draft me. That meant I would first be on active duty, and then have reserve duty for six years: one weekend every month and two weeks during the summer. So, I spent the second half of that year on active duty. First was basic training in San Antonio. Early one morning the son of a Chief Master Sergeant (the highest enlisted rank) told me his father’s favorite joke:

 

“What is the difference between the Air Force and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.”

 

Then I had tech school in Wichita Falls. Finally, I had on the job training in a hospital near St. Louis.

 

In 1973 I started graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University. I also was working for one weekend a month as a reserve medic in the clinic out at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport that was part of the 911th Tactical Airlift Group. Most of my job was helping do the annual flight physicals. That meant I did tasks like eye tests, hearing tests, blood pressures, pulse rates, electrocardiograms, and even footprints.

 

From 1973 until 1975 on paper I belonged to a unit called the 911th Mobility Support Squadron. It is jargon meaning replacement troops, and had the acronym MSS. No vowel you add to make it pronounceable looks good. I vote for mess. You may remember the 1988 movie Bull Durham about a minor league baseball team. Kevin Costner plays the veteran catcher Crash Davis who just has been sent to the Durham Bulls to balance out a trade. When he walks into the team manager’s office the manager scowls and asks, Who are you? He introduces himself by replying that he is just the player to be named later. My reserve unit felt like that. We were only a minor league team. Morale always was near zero. If I did not have to be there, I would have preferred to be somewhere else.

 

In July 1975 I was told I had been reassigned. Now I belonged to the 758th Tactical Airlift Squadron. I walked up the hill to the base operations building to sign in with my new unit before going to work. When I went in, I noticed that everyone was smiling. They all were happy to be there. Their Admin sergeant welcomed me. His first five words were that: we are all professionals here.

 

Before I headed down the hill to work at the clinic, I needed to stop and use the bathroom. What I saw there amazed me. Inside the toilet stall door, under a clear plastic cover, was a sheet of paper listing exactly what each aircrewman (pilot, copilot, and flight mechanic) had to do to handle an in-flight nightmare – having one of the two piston engines on the plane fail. The title read Don’t just sit there; have an accident. As I washed my hands I looked around and saw that the same emergency procedures also were posted on the wall above every urinal. I thought, wow, these guys are really serious.

 

The 758th flew a twenty-year-old cargo plane called the C123K. If you saw the movie Con Air then you have seen one. It looks like the one shown above.  It has a high straight wing with two piston engines, and a fuselage shaped like a pig. It carries 15 tons of cargo or up to sixty troops The C123K was not pressurized, and wasn’t really even watertight. It has a wimpy official name - the Provider.

 

But the C123K had a secret. Under the wings there also were a pair of auxiliary jet engines. Their added thrust could get the plane into the air from a very short dirt runway. It also could keep the plane flying normally with one piston engine completely shut off. The Air Force had a series of jet fighters whose names started with the powerful word Thunder: the F-84 Thunderjet and Thunderstreak, and the F-105 Thunderchief. So the 758th renamed their plane the mighty Thunderpig.

 

The 758th had adult leadership. They believed in personal empowerment. Treat all your people like adults and give them room to blossom. Tell them what needs to be done, and let them work as a team to get it done. Other than emergency procedures you don’t need to spell out exactly how.

 

Now, that was not the typical attitude in Pittsburgh back then. Mostly you got arrogant management butting heads with powerful unions like the United Steelworkers, the USW.  Loadmasters in the 758th were a burly, boisterous, bunch of Polish-American sergeants who worked as hammersmiths over at a USW forge shop. Most were almost in the same shape as back when they had played high school football. They were proud of their reserve unit and treated it like it was their football team.     

 

Eighteen months later I watched the 758th accept an award – the Grover Loening Trophy for best flying unit in the Air Force Reserve. Here is one reason why. One of their planes was flying low at night with a full load of Army Rangers getting ready for a paratroop drop. The ramp and door on the back of the plane already were wide open when one engine sputtered and then quit. They began to lose altitude rapidly. The crew feathered the propeller, started up the auxiliary jets and the mighty Thunderpig climbed and got them home safely. A less skilled crew probably would have crashed and killed all 45 people aboard.  

 

Personal empowerment comes in all sorts of places. I found it in an Air Force Reserve unit. Which unit does your workplace resemble more, the Mobility Support Squadron (a mess) or that Tactical Airlift Squadron? Could you help change it?

 

An image of a C123K came from Wikimedia Commons.