Zombie fear statistics just keep stumbling back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superficial research is widespread. One consequence is zombie fear statistics that come back again and again, especially before Halloween. On March 22, 2019 I blogged about An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support. In that post I had quoted nonsense from Statistic Brain. It showed up again on October 14, 2022 in an article by Elisha Gul at Weshare titled 41+ Public speaking statistics you should know (as #28), and on October 29, 2022 in another article by Peter Weltman at Fast Company titled How I manage my fear of public speaking with comedy that opened by claiming:

 

“Public speaking is frightening. The National Social Anxiety Center places public speaking as the most common phobia behind death, spiders, and heights. Public speaking anxiety, or glossophobia, affects an astonishing 73% of the population.”

 

On October 12, 2020 I blogged about Do 77% of Americans fear public speaking? No! That percentage described stage fright in Swedes who also had social anxiety disorder. And then, on January 29, 2022 I blogged about A zombie statistic that 77% of the general population fears public speaking. That nonsense turned up again both on September 17, 2022 in an article by Lawrence Haywood at AhaSlides titled The fear of public speaking: 15 tips to beat glossophobia in 2023, and on October 11, 2022 in a post by Michael Lee at the Prezi Blog titled Best practices to speak publicly without freaking out.

 

The zombie silhouette was adapted from Openclipart.

 

 

Update November 10, 2022

 

The second sentence in an article by Andrea Heuston at Forbes on November 10, 2022 titled

Three techniques you can implement immediately to help you enjoy public speaking claimed:

 

“Studies have found that around 77% of the world’s population fears public speaking—it’s so common that it has its own name, ‘glossophobia.’ “

 

 

What David Gergen missed when he discussed results from the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears in his 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How Great Leaders Are Made

 

A common strategy for opening a speech, blog post, or book section is to quote a Startling Statistic. Hopefully that statistic is real, not like one I blogged about in a post on March 22, 2019 titled An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support. And when you look it up you should get back to its primary source, and also check for the most recent results.  

 

On October 20, 2022 I blogged about how David Gergen’s 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How Great Leaders Are Made has an excellent chapter on The Art of Public Persuasion. Chapter 9 in it, on pages 154 to 169, is titled The Art of Public Persuasion and its second section  titled The Basics of Public Speaking opens on page 161 by stating:

 

“Some years ago, a pollster reported on the three greatest fears of Americans. Their results: Number three were bugs, snakes, and other animals; second was heights; the greatest fear was speaking in front of an audience.”

 

Notes in the back of his book indicate he was referring to a commonly cited article by Christopher Ingraham in the Washington Post on October 30, 2014 titled America’s top fears: public speaking, heights and bugs. I first blogged about it in a post on October 27, 2014 titled What do the most Americans fear? The Chapman Survey of American Fears and the press release copying reflex. Then I blogged about it on October 29, 2014 in another post titled Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts, and included a series of bar charts.

 

What did the primary source say about that survey? There is a press release by Sheri Ledbetter at Chapman University on October 20, 2014 titled What Americans Fear Most – New Poll from Chapman University. Instead it listed the following top five things Americans fear most as: Walking alone at night, Becoming the victim of identity theft, safety on the internet, Being the victim of a mass/random shooting, and public speaking. Why is that list different?

 

That top ranking for public speaking in the 2014 survey Gergen mentioned came because it only considered 12 ‘phobias’ although there really were questions about 61 fears, worries, or concerns. Those twelve are less than a fifth of the survey questions. You can find detailed results from Chapman, but will see those questions were asked in seven different ways: Safety (6 questions) – How safe do you feel? Internet-related Fears (5 questions) – How concerned are you about the following internet-related problem? Environmental Attitudes & Concerns (12 questions) - Indicate the extent to which you feel concerned about the following environmental issue. Disasters (14 questions) - How worried are you that the following natural/manmade disasters or event could occur in the United States in the next 25 years? Governmental Concerns (4 questions) – How worried are you about the following? Fear of Criminal Victimization (8 questions) – How afraid are you of being victimized in the following way? Phobias (12 questions) – How afraid are you of the following?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you add the eight similar questions about Criminal Victimization to Phobias for a total of twenty (still just a third of the results), you find, as shown above, that 49.7% feared Identity theft/credit card fraud versus only 25.3% for public speaking. So, public speaking came in second rather than first, as I discussed on January 10, 2022 in a post titled The opening paragraph of an article on public speaking earns two pinocchios for telling us lies.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the 2014 survey the only one from Chapman University? No, they repeated it annually seven more times, but with the questions asked in a consistent way, and a bigger list with 79 to 95 questions. They skipped the pandemic year of 2020, so there was just a survey titled 2020/2021. As shown above via another bar chart, in 2015 through 2022 the most common (#1) fear was of Corrupt Government Officials, and it was much larger than that for Public Speaking, which ranked from #26 to #59. You can find articles from Chapman discussing their surveys in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020/21, and 2022.   

 

A teleprompter worst moment for an introducer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she was asked about the worst moment in her career, actress Abigail Breslin replied it happened back in 2009. She was just thirteen, and was supposed to introduce her idol Jane Goodall at an event in Washington D.C. Abigail described it in an article by Nina Metz in the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2021 titled My worst moment: Abigail Breslin and the time she mistakenly impersonated Jane Goodall.

 

Abigail read the introduction from a teleprompter. But she didn’t stop until coming to a passage about going to the rainforest in 1972. Then Abby (who is dyslexic) finally realized she had read almost half of Jane’s speech. Whoever prepared the teleprompter script forgot to annotate it to show where the introduction ended and the speech began. Abby was so mortified she ran offstage and cried in the bathroom. Luckily when she went to apologize to Goodall, Jane just laughed it off.

 

At her Knockout Presentations Blog on March 9, 2022 Diane DiResta has a post titled 10 Tips to speak with a teleprompter. The sixth says:

 

“You’ll know the end is coming because it will be color coded. Usually the script will be in white and the final message will be in yellow.”

 

The cartoon of a teleprompter was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Making a distracting room layout tolerable

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my post yesterday titled Less than obvious sources of Table Topics questions for Toastmasters club meetings I mentioned a 2022 book by Steven James and Tom Morrisey: The Art of the Tale (and subtitled Engage your audience, elevate your organization, and share your message through storytelling). An excellent story about fixing a room layout is described in a section titled Prepare Your Space (No bikinis allowed!). It appears on page 86:

 

“I was teaching a conference in San Diego some years ago, and when I arrived at the venue where the eight-hour-long seminar was to take place, I saw that the entire wall behind the podium was a mirror. That was bad enough – I could only imagine the listeners staring at themselves all day – but then I realized that the back wall of the room behind them was entirely glass, overlooking the pool! So, I was supposed to teach these educators all day while, every ten or fifteen seconds, the reflection of someone in a bikini was going to walk across the stage in front of them.”

 

At this point you can easily imagine the chorus from Katy Perry’s song California Gurls:

 

“California girls, we’re unforgettable

Daisy Dukes bikinis on top

Sun-kissed skin so hot we’ll melt your popsicle

Ooh oh ooh

 

California girls, we’re undeniable

Fine, fresh, fierce, we got it on lock

West Coast represent, now put your hands up

Ooh oh ooh”

 

The story continues:

 

“I knew there was no way I could compete with Southern California pool life on display.

 

Thankfully, I’d arrived early enough to reset the room before anyone else showed up. I turned all the chairs toward a side wall. It only took a few minutes. No one else knew that I’d rearranged the room, and the seminar went fine, with no swimsuit-clad interruptions. That day, I learned to always arrive early enough to adjust a room if necessary to provide the best environment for my listeners.”

 

The gold bikini design was adapted from an image at the Library of Congress.

 

Less than obvious sources of Table Topics questions for Toastmasters club meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table Topics is the impromptu speaking section of a Toastmasters club meeting, where participants provide one-to-two-minute answers to questions. It is discussed in an article by Greg Lewis on pages 26 and 27 of the January 2022 Toastmaster magazine titled The two sides of Table Topics.

 

Where can you find ideas for good questions? The lazy way is just to Google table topics questions. But a better idea is to look more broadly under impromptu speaking. At My Speech Class on August 5, 2022 there is an article by Kate titled 200+ Good impromptu speech topics. And at public speaking mentor on August 12, 2022 there is a second article by Darrell Burton titled 100+ Impromptu speech topics. And at Assignment HELP PRO on September 24, 2022 there is a third article by Linnea Smith titled 125 Interesting impromptu speech topics and ideas.

 

I also was looking at a 2022 book by Steven James and Tom Morrisey titled The Art of the Tale (and subtitled Engage your audience, elevate your organization, and share your message through storytelling). Chapter 7 is on The Six Most Common Mistakes Speakers Make, and on page 119 there is a list of fifteen story starters that begin with Tell us about a time when:

 

“Things didn’t go as planned…

You learned a lesson the hard way…

You tried to impress someone and it backfired…

You consistently did the right thing and were finally appreciated for it…

You wondered if maybe you’d finally gone too far in a relationship…

You had a hard time letting go of something or someone…

You worked hard to earn a second chance and it paid off…

You faced a tough decision…

You were stuck between a rock and a hard place…

You decided to take life by the horns and embark on a new chapter in your life…

You overcame great hardship to make something of yourself…

You stepped out on a limb and it broke off … but you learned about the benefits of taking a risk…

You sacrificed something for the one you loved…

You didn’t heed a warning and paid the price … but discovered something useful in the process…

You thought you could do something but failed … and learned about the importance of humility…”

 

A cartoon image of a woman was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Watch which time units you use in charts, graphs, and tables

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw an article at KTVB on October 10, 2022 titled Chick-fil-A has slowest drive-thru, study says. It referred to The 2022 QSRDrive-Thru Report, which has lots of data for ten chains, and said that Chick-fil-A took 325.47 seconds, versus just 221.99 seconds for Taco Bell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Data for all ten chains are shown above via a PowerPoint bar chart. But I don’t usually think in terms of hundreds of seconds – and likely neither do you. My watch displays times in hours, minutes, and seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

325.47 seconds converts to a much smaller and easier to grasp 5 minutes and 13 seconds (5.215 min). Relabeling the chart in minutes (with a scale running from zero to six), as shown above, makes a lot more sense for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But why does getting served at Chick-fil-A take so long? As shown above via a third bar chart, they are a lot busier – with more cars in line than other chains.

 

There is an article by Seth Emerson at The Athletic on September 23, 2022 titled College football games are taking longer, and everyone, including TV, wants to fix that. In 2022 the average game takes 3 hours and 32 minutes, which makes a lot more sense than saying either 212 minutes or a ludicrous 12,720 seconds.

 

The 2022 Chapman Survey of American Fears has a forest with 92 fears. Public speaking was feared by 34% of adults and only ranked 46th

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s almost Halloween, and therefore time for another scary survey about fears. On October 14, 2022 there is a blog post from Chapman University titled The Top 10 Fears in America 2022. The web page for that survey has a link to their report  with detailed results of their eighth 2022 Chapman Survey of American Fears (for 1020 respondents done back in April), and to a list of the percentages (as usual based on the sum for Very Afraid plus Afraid).

 

A box in the blog post notes incorrectly that:

 

“Fear of corrupt government officials has remained the greatest fear for yet another year since first landing in the spot in 2015. The fear, however, has experienced a steep drop from 79.6% (2020/21) to 62.1% (2022), the lowest it has been since 2016.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That 62.1% actually is the most common fear, as is shown above in a bar chart presenting the Top Twenty fears.

 

Where is public speaking? Not in the Top Twenty! It’s ranked right in the middle at 46th, feared by 34% (just over a third). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above via a second bar chart, that’s higher than the 25.3% (just over a quarter) from the 2014 survey where it was ranked first, which has often been misquoted since it appeared in an October 30, 2014 Washington Post newspaper article by Christopher Ingraham (just about the Phobias category) titled America’s top fears: public speaking, heights and bugs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can instead rank fears based on a Fear Score, on a scale from one to four, where 1 = Not Afraid, 2 = Slightly Afraid, 3 = Afraid, and 4 = Very Afraid. This year Corrupt Government Officials (the greatest fear) has a Fear Score of 2.982, just below Afraid. As shown above via a third bar chart, Public Speaking has a Fear Score of 2.172, and over the eight surveys an average of 1.993, just below Slightly Afraid.   

  

In surveys a small percentage of people typically don’t answer, so along with the four fear levels (Very Afraid, Afraid, Slightly Afraid, Not Afraid) there is a category for Refused or Don’t Know. In this survey it is labeled Web Blank, and 0.5% or less.

 

The Chapman blog post does not discuss a very curious feature for eleven of their fear data percentages. There are two more categories labeled Doesn’t Apply to Me and I Don’t Know Who/What This Is. There are three cases with huge percentages for Doesn’t Apply to Me: 56.3% for Not Being Able to Pay Off College Debt of Myself or a Family Member, 35.4% for Being Unemployed, and 19.4% for Not Having Enough Money to Pay My Rent or Mortgage.

 

There are eight more cases for I Don’t Know Who/What This Is with 29.8% for The Proud Boys, 27.6% for Antifa, 17.6% for Right Wing Extremists, 17.5% for Left Wing Extremists, 5.2% for White Supremacists, 2.3% for Muslims, 2.2% for Black Lives Matter (BLM), and 1.1% for Immigrants. 

 

In all these cases they rescaled the data by multiplying by a factor like 100/(100 - % for Doesn’t Apply to Me), which for 56.3% would be 2.288 so a sum that was 18.8% got rescaled way up to 43.0%.  

 

The ~1894 painting of fear by Maria Yakunchikova was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

David Gergen’s 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How Great Leaders Are Made has an excellent chapter on The Art of Public Persuasion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed reading David Gergen’s excellent 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How great leaders are made. Chapter 9 in it, on pages 154 to 169, is titled The Art of Public Persuasion and has a good discussion of public speaking. Sections in it are titled:

 

FINDING YOUR PUBLIC VOICE

THE BASICS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

  First, Know Your Purpose

  Second, Have a Clear Message

  Third, Pay Attention to the Key Elements of a Speech

  Fourth, the Importance of Stories

  Fifth, Master the Elements of Eloquence

PERSUASION IN A DIGITAL WORLD

 

I blogged about how the chapter opens on October 8, 2022 in a post titled You can learn about public speaking from the same old book used by Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. My only problem with this chapter is the statement opening the section titled THE BASICS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING, on page 161, which I will blog about in a follow-up post:

 

“Some years ago, a pollster reported on the three greatest fears of Americans. Their results: Number three were bugs, snakes, and other animals; second was heights; the greatest fear was speaking in front of an audience.”

 

The Executive Summary beginning on page 235 lists the following 20 Key Takeaways:

 

OUR COUNTRY NEEDS A SERIOUS COURSE CORRECTION
PREPARE NOW TO PASS THE TORCH TO NEW GENERATIONS

LEADERSHIP, ALWAYS HARD, HAS BECOME HARDER

LEADERSHIP STARTS FROM WITHIN

HAVE THREE OBJECTIVES EARLY

FIND YOUR TRUE NORTH

FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS

EXTEND YOUR LEADERSHIP JOURNEY OUTSIDE YOURSELF

TRY HARD THINGS, FAIL, MOVE ON

YOU ARE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO LEAD

DEVOTE A YEAR TO NATIONAL SERVICE

SECURE YOUR FINANCES

EMBRACE CRUCIBLE MOMENTS

LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR BOSS

MOBILIZE OTHERS THROUGH PERSUASION

YOUR GREATEST ENEMY MIGHT BE YOU

LEARN FROM NEW MODELS OF LEADERSHIP

SEEK GUIDANCE FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT

FRIENDS AND NETWORKS STILL MATTER

MAINTAIN A CELESTIAL SPARK

 

The fifteenth takeaway, on pages 241 and 242, titled MOBILIZE OTHERS THROUGH PERSUASION says:

 

“From the days of Demosthenes, who practiced speaking with stones in his mouth, to the days of Oprah, who can create magical moments with her guests, leaders have relied upon their capacity to persuade. As Churchill is believed to have said, ‘Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as a gift of oratory.’ As in so many areas of leadership, there is only one way to master it: practice, practice, practice. Accept every offer to speak; prepare carefully (Churchill would spend an hour of prep for each minute he had in a parliamentary speech); and solicit feedback.”

 

There is an Epilogue titled Answering the Call, containing a section starting on page 258 titled IN THE ARENA that quotes paragraph eight from a well-known speech given on April 23, 1910 by Theodore Roosevelt titled Citizenship in a Republic which powerfully begins by stating:

 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

 

The image of Theodore Roosevelt came from the Library of Congress.

 

Tips for taking care of your voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (part of the National Institutes of Health) has an excellent article (Publication No. 14-5260) from March 2021 titled Taking Care of Your Voice, which also can be downloaded as a four-page pdf.

 

There also is a single page pdf Voice Care Factsheet from May 2022 by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists titled Top tips on caring for and projecting your voice.

 

And there is a brief article by Lesley Childs from UT Southwestern on April 13, 2020 titled Voice care: sorting fact from fiction.

 

For more detail, there is a six-page pdf article titled How do I maintain longevity of my voice? by Yolanda D. Heman-Ackah et al in the March/April 2008 Journal of Singing.

 

What Would You Do (WWYD)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The September-October 2022 issue of Speaker magazine contains an interesting article by Traci Brown on pages 26 to 29 titled WWYD? (What Would You Do) and subtitled Things You Didn’t Know You Should Know Just in Case. It discusses the following situations:

 

Handling an audience emergency [seizure]

What if the situation is a little less dire? [noisy false fire alarm]

But what if it had been worse? [real threat like active shooter]

But what if it’s even worse than that? [9/11 attacks, etc.]

Like I was saying [hotel orders evacuation because of hurricane]

And then there are just some ideas so you’re smarter than the average bear

 

On November 6, 2019 I has blogged about previous articles in Toastmaster and Speaker magazines in a post titled Excellent advice on how to deal with a distraction or emergency during your speech.

 

An image of a gargoyle by Carol Highsmith at the Providence Children’s Museum came from the Library of Congress.

 

When Murphy beds meet Murphy’s Law

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Murphy bed is hinged at the head end so it can fold up against a wall (as shown above) to provide more floor space in a small room such as found in a studio apartment or Bedsit. It is named after William Lawrence Murphy (1876 to 1957), who patented in early in the 20th century.  

 

Murphy’s Law was stated by Edward A. Murphy Jr. (1918 to 1990). It says that:

 

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

 

On September 8, 2022 the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for 8,200 beds titled Murphy beds recalled due to serious impact and crush hazards; manufactured by Cyme Tech (recall alert).

 

The problem is that:

 

“The wall beds can break or detach from the wall and fall onto those nearby, posing serious impact and crush hazards.

 

The firm has received 146 reports of the beds falling or breaking including 62 injuries involving broken bones, lacerations, concussions and other injuries.”

 

And the remedy is:

 

“Customers should immediately stop using the recalled Murphy beds and contact Cyme Tech to schedule a free inspection and repair of the bed. Cyme Tech is contacting all known purchasers directly.”

 

Wording for a recall typically comes from a company’s legal department. There is a lack of detail about the specific problem. Was it with fasteners, or the frame?

 

An image of a Murphy bed came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

UPDATE

 

Unfortunately Cyme Tech wasn’t the only Murphy bed recently recalled. On April 7, 2022 another 129,000 beds were recalled as described in another article titled Bestar recalls wall beds due to serious impact and crush hazards; One adult death reported (recall alert). And in 2018 another 2,300 were recalled in yet another article titled Rockler recalls Murphy Bed kits due to tip-over and entrapment hazards (recall alert).

 

Is the man at the right in this 1670 painting holding an iPhone or just a letter?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article in The U.S. Sun by Jacob Bentley-York on October 7, 2022 titled More ‘proof’ time travel is REAL as ‘iPhone’ is spotted in 350-year-old painting in Amsterdam museum. But, as shown above in the painting by Pieter de Hooch, the man is more likely just holding a letter in an envelope. Thinking it’s an iPhone is an example of pareidolia, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as:

 

“the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”

 

An earlier article about Tim Cook in the New York Magazine – Intelligencer by Madison Malone Kircher on May 25, 2016 is titled Apple CEO loves iPhones so much he saw one in this 300-year-old painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It got mentioned again after a second article in The U.S. Sun on October 4, 2022 by Olivia Burke titled THY-PHONE ‘Time traveler’ woman seen holding an iPhone in 150-year-old painting, viewers claim – but experts have a simple answer. As shown above, in that painting her hands more likely are holding a pocket-sized prayer book.

 

Another statement from an arrogant blowhard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some writers are careful. They double check numbers before using them. But other arrogant blowhards do not. At the Gem State Patriot News on October 2, 2022 there is an article by Dr. John Livingston titled Has America Lost Its Roots? His second paragraph contains the following gem:

 

“… In Genesis, the material –dust and the transcendental-spirit, were joined together. With the Incarnation ‘the word became flesh’ and dwelt amongst us.’ That idea has been the basis of Western Civilization for over 8000 years. Cosmology—anthropology—Christology all connected. The physical and the spiritual. No other religion and no other political models including the ‘isms’ make this connection. Only in the Christian-Judeo tradition is the importance of the individual person so important. That is because we were made by God and for God.”

 

But 8000 years is way too long, as shown above via a PowerPoint timeline. According to the Hebrew calendar (which begins at Creation) we just started the year 5783. If you had been paying any attention to recent news, you would have heard that. For example, another article from CNN published by CBS News Baltimore on September 26, 2022 titled 5 things to know about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year begins:

 

“Sunday is the start of Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Jewish New Year, which marks the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days. The millennia old holiday is an occasion for reflection, and is often celebrated with prayer, symbolic foods, and the blowing of a traditional horn called a shofar. This year’s Rosh Hashanah marks the start of year 5783 in the Hebrew calendar.”

 

On July 20, 2022 I blogged about a previous article from John in a post titled Unsupported statements from an arrogant blowhard.

 

You can learn about public speaking from the same old book used by Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article at New England Historical Society is titled The book that taught Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln how to speak. I saw it mentioned on page 154 of David Gergen’s excellent 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How great leaders are made. It opens his Chapter 9, titled The Art of Public Persuasion.

 

That 1797 book by Caleb Bingham is titled The Columbian Orator. You can find a .pdf version of the 1817 edition here at the Internet Archive. The Preface opens by stating:

 

“Notwithstanding the multiplicity of Schoolbooks now in use, it has been often suggested, that a Selection, calculated particularly for Dialogue and Declamation, would be of extensive utility in our seminaries.

 

The art of Oratory needs no encomium. To cultivate its rudiments, and diffuse its spirit among the Youth of America is the design of this Book.”  

 

Its Introduction, on pages 7 to 28, is titled General directions for speaking; extracted from various authors. The rest of that 300-page book has 83 speeches, eight by David Everett, six by William Pitt, four by James Hervey, three by George Washington, and two by Napoleon Buonaparte. That Introduction is well worth reading.

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Pages 17 and 18 have the following advice about use of pauses:

 

“Now the common rule given in pausing is, that we stop our voice at a comma till we can tell one, at a semicolon two, at a colon three, and at a full period four. And as these points are either accommodated to the several parts of the same sentence, as the first three; or different sentences, as the last: this occasions a different length of the pause, by which either the dependence of what precedes upon us that which follows, or its distinction from it is represented.”

 

Back on November 6, 2019 I had blogged about Please just don’t tell us about ‘the pause’ – because there are several different types and lengths. I had not realized how old that advice was.

 

Our plastic trash cart has cracked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Tuesday the county’s trash contractor, Hardin Sanitation, picks up our garbage. Before 7:00 AM I roll the 95-gallon blue plastic cart out to the curb. Last week when I went to put it back behind our house, I noticed there now was a two-foot vertical crack in one corner, as is shown above. The cart was furnished by Hardin. The bar code label on its front has a date of 09-01-19, so it only is about three years old.

 

How did it get cracked? When Hardin empties it, their truck picks it up using a robot arm, as is discussed by Jose Rodrieguez Jr. in an article at Jalopnik on January 7, 2022 titled Here’s how garbage truck robot arms work: an explainer. The arm just should grab a cart by the sides. If it instead squeezed diagonally, it could crack the cart. We are going to ask Hardin to replace it before the crack extends and the bottom falls out, like the one in another article at Bungalower on December 30, 2015 titled Ask Bungalower: How do I get my garbage bin replaced?

 

Carts likely are made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Are there good ways to repair a cracked cart? Yes, they can be fusion welded, as shown in an eight-minute YouTube video from Drader Manufacturing titled Learn Plastic Welding >> Weld and repair a garbage bin with a plastic welder. Similar techniques (with a hot air gun and rod) are used to repair HDPE kayaks, as shown in another five-minute YouTube video titled Boat welding.