Celebrating the milestone of a million page views

It’s spring, and this blog just passed another milestone of receiving 1,000,000 page views. That’s like everyone in the Honolulu metro area stopping by for a look. Here is a list of my top ten most popular posts:

1]  October 27, 2009 (16,636 views = 100%)

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

2]  July 5, 2009 – 97.1%

Two types of speech outlines: speaking and preparation

3]  December 29, 2011 - 37.8%

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

4]  December 11, 2009 - 36.8%

Does homeopathic Argentum nitricum reduce anxiety?

5]  January 11, 2011 - 20.8%

Timing lights for speakers

6]  August 9, 2010 - 20.0%

The power of brief speeches: World War I and the Four Minute Men

7]  September 18, 2009 - 19.3%

Herbal remedies for anxiety

8]  May 19, 2011 - 9.4%

America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey

9]  August 13, 2010 - 9.3%

Add your unique perspective to a topic

10] December 15, 2011 - 8.8%

Can homeopathic gelsemium reduce anxiety about public speaking?

I often have been surprised by what does and doesn’t get popular. #3 was an afterthought from a preceding post on December 26, 2011 about Walter Lewin’s MIT lectures titled Finding and communicating wonder in physics. #5 was followed on March 1, 2011 by what I thought was a more interesting post on a simpler way (Timing Tiles) to add feedback titled Being second in my first Toastmasters speech contest. 

Two other educational posts I thought should have been way more popular were the February 19, 2014 post on how Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists and the February 24, 2015 post on How to do a better job of speech research than the average Toastmaster (by using your friendly local public and state university libraries)

Three recent posts I enjoyed writing and hope will become popular are:

February 5, 2017 - Can turquoise and other crystals heal fear of public speaking?

January 5, 2017 - Playing Games with Words – crossword puzzles and Scrabble

December 20, 2016 - Bursting the overblown claim that 95% of Americans fear public speaking at some level. This one drew the nastiest comment I’ve ever received, which came from no less than the Chairman of the Department of English and Communications Studies at Texas Lutheran University.

I also had lots of fun with using Photoshop Elements to modify graphics like the recruiting poster of Uncle Sam that first showed up in the July 6, 2009 post on Celebrate Freedom from Fear of Public Speaking Week and again in the January 1, 2016 post Remember that only YOU can prevent bad presentations.

A panorama of Honolulu came from Wikimedia Commons.