Birds and a world full of wonder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been enjoying reading Toronto writer Julia Zarankin’s 2020 memoir titled Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder. Birds can be identified based on a combination of their appearance, behavior, and song. You can read an excerpt from her book published in Canadian Geographic on February 22, 2021. In it she talks about her introduction to birding as an outdoor group activity. There is a second excerpt in the Toronto Star on September 12, 2020 titled How birding taught me to appreciate the ‘interspecies differences between my husband and me.’ She talks about behaviors distinguishing between a white-breasted nuthatch and a black-capped chickadee, and spontaneity.

 

Julia concludes her book by observing after a decade that:

 

“I kept coming back because watching birds made me happy. But I had no idea why. I had no idea that my life was about to change completely, because for the first time I would be looking into the details of things, examining a bird in its ecological context, falling in love with nature, and suddenly the world would expand and this place I lived in, which I had never found all that spectacular, this urban concrete mess laced with traffic, would come alive and transform into a series of interconnected wild spaces.

 

Even though I will always be a migratory species, somewhere deep down, seeing that bird, which might take off at any second, has taught me to sit still, to relish the moment. You see a bird, I’d now say to Randy, and then life becomes exponentially richer because suddenly you’re connected with these magical flying machines that transport you back in time, since they’re as close as you’ll ever get, evolutionally speaking, to dinosaurs. You see a bird as mesmerizing as the yellow-headed blackbird and you can’t look back, you’ve fallen in love and want to do everything to protect them, and suddenly your cynicism washes away and you sense the fragility of their habitats, the challenges of their migrations and their ferocious determination to survive.

 

And when you really see that bird, the one that takes hold of you, the world appears full of wonder.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have that sense of wonder about nature, you want to share it, as is shown above by a sign I saw on a bulletin board in a classroom at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls back in June 2014. My wife and I were at the annual meeting of the Idaho Native Plant Society. (She was their treasurer for several years, and is a Master Gardener). I also blogged about a trip during their 2012 meeting in a post on July 23, 2012 titled A narrated hike through the forest along Morris Creek.

 

The baby owl was photographed back in 2012 during a visit to the World Center for Birds of Prey located just south of Boise and run by The Peregrine Fund.

 

Shallow research and less curious than hoped

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For inspiration, I have been borrowing books from my friendly local public library on broad topics like curiosity and creativity. One is Seth Goldenberg’s 2022 book titled Radical Curiosity: Questioning commonly held beliefs to imagine flourishing futures. There is an excerpt titled The Wonder of New Ideas at the Stanford SOCIAL INNOVATION Review on September 20, 2022. On Page 10 of the book, under the heading of CHALLENGING COMMONLY HELD BELIEFS, he boldly claims:

 

“…. Often commonly held beliefs are so common they are camouflaged. Identifying a commonly held belief, peeling back the assumptions it is built upon, and restlessly seeking interventions and leverage points for greater impact is the life cycle of a challenger. People who are Radically Curious are ferociously hungry in their pursuit of knowledge, not as a fixed resource but as an ongoing process. Radical Curiosity is the greatest expression of what it means to be a philosopher: an engaged thinker dedicated to the reconstruction of new knowledge.”

 

What did Seth do in a specific case? Did he peel back all the assumptions? No, his research was just shallow. His second paragraph on page 124 says:

 

“According to a 2015 study conducted by Microsoft researchers in Canada, the average person generally loses their concentration after eight seconds, a drop from 12 seconds in the year 2000. Considering that the length of a goldfish’s memory is documented to be about nine seconds, it may be safe to say that we have become less focused than goldfish. …”

 

That is complete nonsense, which I blogged about in a post on August 5, 2020 titled When doing research, your attention span should be more than 10 seconds. A note in the back of Seth’s book refers to an article by Kevin McSpadden in Time on May 14, 2015 titled You now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. But it doesn’t mention memory – just attention. And McSpadden missed that the Microsoft report doesn’t say those attention spans came from their research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above (on page 6 of the Microsoft report), they got them from a commercial web site called Statistic Brain. Both the BBC and Wall Street Journal determined that Statistic Brain just had made them up.

 

What is a tranche?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My vocabulary keeps expanding. This year I noticed the word tranche appearing in the news. It’s a word which seems intended to amaze rather than inform. There is an article by Daniel Uria at UPI on April 28, 2022 titled National Archives releasing new tranche of records from Trump White House to Jan. 6 committee. A second article by Rebecca Beitsch at The Hill on October 5, 2022 is titled ‘Privileged’ Mar-a-Lago tranche includes Trump legal docs, discussion on pardons. A third article by Michael Shermer at Newsweek on December 16, 2022 titled What the JFK assassination documents exposed | Opinion begins by stating that:

 

“On Thursday, December 15, the National Archives and Records Administration released a tranche of 13,173 documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

 

And on December 21, 2022 President Joe Biden tweeted:

 

“Today, I’m announcing the next tranche of security assistance to Ukraine:

A $1.85 billion package that includes equipment and ammunition contracts. And a Patriot missile battery that we will train forces to operate as part of our effort to strengthen Ukranian air defense.”

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says tranche just is French for a slice, and defines a tranche as:

 

“a division or portion of a pool or whole”

 

Sportswriters have a whole set of synonyms for when they get tired of saying a team is winning – like beating, conquering, defeating, dominating, drubbing, licking, overpowering, shellacking, sweeping, trouncing, vanquishing, or whipping.

 

Tranche belongs on another list - along with amount, bowl, cup, division, helping, plate, portion, quantity, ration, serving, and slice.

 

A questionable 2x2 grid from Seth Godin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most common business graphics is a 2x2 chart, grid, matrix, or table. First, we draw and label horizontal and vertical axes. Then we identify the four quadrants. (The desired one typically is shown at the upper right). On July 3, 2020 I blogged about Is that 2x2 graphic a table, a chart, or a matrix? Should the axis go from left to right or right to left? And on July 5, 2020 I blogged about Is that 2x2 graphic a chart or a matrix? How many quadrants are there?

 

Seth Godin is so well known his blog is titled with just his first name. At SETH’S BLOG on December 27, 2022 there is a post titled Scale and the small business (freelancer grid). The title needs revision – grid belongs outside the parentheses. Seth’s grid is similar to the one shown above. The vertical axis has Large Scale up, and Small down - but both should say Scale. The  horizontal axis confusingly has Seeking Unique Qualities at left and Undifferentiated Commodities at right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I redrew the grid as shown above, and added green and red titles to identify the desired and undesired quadrants.

 

Christmas messages of kindness and hope from King Charles III and President Joe Biden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before Christmas there was a five-minute video message from King Charles III, which you can watch on YouTube at BBC News. The full text can be read here at The Guardian. There also is an eight-minute address at the White House by Joe Biden, and that text is here. Both carefully-written messages also mention losses.

 

But there also was this brief, unhinged rant by Donald J. Trump at Truth Social:

 

“Merry Christmas to EVERYONE, including the Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is illegally coercing & paying Social and LameStream Media to push for a mentally disabled Democrat over the Brilliant, Clairvoyant, and USA LOVING Donald J. Trump, and, of course, The Department of Injustice, which appointed a Special ‘Prosecutor’ who, together with his wife and family, HATES ‘Trump’ more than any other person on earth. LOVE TO ALL!”

 

Trump’s message has a tone of malice toward all and charity towards none, in contrast with Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech where he spoke:

 

“With malice toward none with charity for all…”

 

The Christmas Eve image came from the Library of Congress.

 

Happy Holidays to us and Donald Trump

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Donald played Santa and we got a pair of book-length collections about him as presents for Christmas. News media will be delighted to analyze them at length during what commonly is a slack news period afterward. Trump will get lots of attention, but likely not the kind he prefers.  

 

One was the release of Trump’s tax returns. An article by Dan Mangan at CNBC on December 20, 2022 titled Read how much Trump paid – or didn’t pay – in taxes each year included a link to a .pdf file. I was disappointed but not surprised to find that for 2016 Trump paid less income tax than I did. Another article by Brian Faler at Politico on December 22, 2022 titled Five red flags in Trump’s taxes said those were:

 

Mammoth Business Losses

Mingling Expenses?

Loans to His Kids

Land Conservation

Foreign Taxes

 

The other is the conclusion and final report from the House’s January 6 th committee. At CNN Politics on December 19, 2022 there is still another article titled Jan. 6 committee votes to refer Trump to DOJ on multiple criminal charges. The Lincoln Project brilliantly summarized them in a brief YouTube video titled Uh, Oh, Donald. The 814-page final report is discussed in yet another article by Mary Clare Jalonick at AP on December 23, 2022 titled Jan. 6 report blames Trump, aims to prevent return to power.

 

My cartoon with children and books was Photoshopped from a December 4, 1901 Puck magazine cover at the Library of Congress.  

 

Five irritating passive-aggressive phrases to avoid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At CNBC on December 18, 2022 there is an article by John Bowe titled Avoid these 5 passive-aggressive phrases that ‘make people respect you less': Public speaking expert. He says they are as follows (and then helpfully suggests what to say instead):

 

“  1]  Just a friendly reminder…

    2]  Don’t take this the wrong way, but…

    3]  Got it.

    4]  Hey, how are we doing with that task I’m waiting for?

    5]  If that’s what you want to do…”

 

In comments after John posted at LinkedIn there were also mentions of:

 

“With all due respect…

If I understood you correctly…

No offense…

If I’m not mistaken…”

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

This is a bounce house (or an inflatable castle), but not a fun hut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clear communication requires getting names of things right. When I get tired of serious topics during the morning, I switch my FM radio from NPR to the syndicated comedy Bob & Tom Show from Indianapolis. A few days ago, they were discussing how, when their co-host Tom Griswold, forgot the appropriate phrase, he just substituted another - like fun hut instead of bounce house. (Wikipedia describes it as an Inflatable Castle). There is a March 24, 2014 web page with examples of Tom Speak, like saying jousting stick instead of lance, or lump at the bottom of a blimp instead of gondola.

 

Often there really are different regional names in use, like that a submarine sandwich can be called a hero, grinder, wedge, or poor boy.

 

I also was reminded me of the old TV show Highway Patrol, which opens with the following narration (SNL parody terms added in italics):

 

“Whenever the laws of any state are broken, a duly authorized organization swings into action. It may be called the State Police, State Troopers, Militia, the Rangers, the Pigs, the Heat, the Klingons,… or the Highway Patrol. These are the stories of the men whose training, skill and courage have enforced and preserved our state laws.”

 

The image of a bounce house came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

How to answer when a tough question puts you on the spot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent article by Allison Shapira at the Harvard Business Review on December 19, 2022 titled When a tough question puts you on the spot. She advises you to:

 

"Prepare in advance

Pause and breathe

Express empathy and honesty

Acknowledge the uncertainty"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similar advice comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on their crisis communication pocket card, which I blogged about on May 30, 2014 in a post titled Remembering what is important in crisis communication – the CDC CERC pocket or emergency card. The front of that card is shown above. (I also mentioned it in another post on March 11, 2020 titled How not to communicate during a real crisis like the coronavirus).

 

 And Allison also says to follow the acronym PREP when you need to take a stand:

 

"Point: State one main point

Reason: Provide a reason behind it

Example: Give an example that supports your point

Point: Before you start rambling, re-state your main point"

 

The Table Topics section of a Toastmasters Club meeting involves answering a question via a one-to-two-minute impromptu speech, and Allison’s advice applies there. Table Topics also is discussed by Peggy Beach in an article titled Spontaneous Speaking which can be found in the October 2020 issue of the Toastmaster magazine.   

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

In their New York criminal trial for tax fraud, Trump’s attorneys tried to throw both their CFO and their former accounting firm under the bus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the recent trial for criminal tax fraud, attorneys for the Trump Organization tried to blame Allen Weisselberg, their own Chief Financial Officer (CFO), since he already had entered guilty pleas. They also tried to shift blame to their former accounting firm, Mazars – saying they should have caught the fraud. (On February 18, 2022 I blogged about how Donald Trump’s Organization got fired by his accountants). An article by Matthew Chapman at Salon on December 2, 2022 is titled Trump Org lawyers throw Allen Weisselberg under the bus after he spilled the beans at trial.

 

But the jury didn’t think any of that was credible. There were 17 counts. Another article by Kara Scannell and Lauren de Valle at CNN on December 7, 2022 reported Trump Organization found guilty on all counts of criminal tax fraud.

 

Merriam-Webster has yet another article on Where does the expression ‘throw someone under the bus’ come from? Their thesaurus explains that ‘spill the beans’ means to make known information previously kept secret.  

 

I created an ‘under the bus’ cartoon from modified versions of this bus  at Openclipart and this man at Wikimedia Commons.  

 

Don’t forget to connect the dots when sharing numbers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent brief article by Teresa Zumwald at Zumwald and Company titled Public speaking tip: Connect the dots when sharing facts and figures. She asked whether you, as a speaker, take the time to connect the dots for your audience. They can’t just rewind and review what you said.

 

Teresa quoted from a speech by Carl Razo titled Trade Matters, Because People Matter, which won in the Economics category in the 2017 Cicero Speechwriting Awards. (I blogged about them on April 16, 2019 in a post titled What do award winning speeches look like?) It appears on page 31 of THESE VITAL SPEECHES: The Best of the 2017 Cicero Speechwriting Awards. You can download it here. Carl pointed out that:

 

“….Twenty years ago, trade as a percentage of GDP was 20%. In 2015 this figure was nearly 30%.

      Twenty years ago, global FDI was worth US $ 341 billion. In 2015 this figure reached US $ 1.7 TRILLION, with FDI stock tripling as a percentage of global GDP since 1990.   

      Twenty years ago, there were 123 members of the WTO. Today there are 164.

      To put it differently: We have never traded as much as we trade today. Firms have never invested as much abroad as they do today. And we have never been as many actors as there are today in the global trading system.

       We are living in an age of unprecedented interdependency, where the destiny of each of us is more than ever tied to the destiny of others.”

 

Carl was speaking to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva on November 24, 2016. They all knew that the acronym GDP means Gross Domestic Product, and FDI means Foreign Direct Investment. Your audience might not, so you should define each acronym the first time you use it.

 

There is a web page about the Cicero awards, with a link for downloading the .pdf of the 2022 award winners.  

 

The image was constructed in PowerPoint using blue, gold, green, and red balls from Openclipart.  

 

Careful editing will improve your presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Inc. on December 16, 2022 there is an article by Carmine Gallo titled Jerry Seinfeld’s editing tip will make your presentations shorter and more concise. In it film editor Peter Holmes said:

 

“He’ll cull the best material and go to work on it, shaving it down until there’s not a wasted syllable … At times, he can be brutal about throwing things away in the edit, but I can’t argue with the results.”

 

Mr. Gallo’s three ways to edit are:

 

Recognize that editing is necessary but hard.

Resist information dumps.

Get help.

 

The scissors cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.

 

Satirical student newspaper article - about giving an impromptu State-of-the-Union speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The State of the Union address is an important speech given annually by the U.S. President to a joint session of Congress, typically late in January. The American University in Washington, D.C. has a student newspaper called the Eagle. On December 15, 2022 it has an article by Nora Sullivan titled Satire: New University-wide participation policy requires students to deliver impromptu State of the Union speech in front of the entire United States citizenry.

 

That’s quite a nightmare, since it would be much longer than a Table Topics speech at a Toastmasters club meeting. And, reportedly, that student also needed to interrupt their peers.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

America needs a superhero, but instead we got the same old fool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump had a video claiming “America needs a superhero” and promising a “major announcement.” What was it? An article by Nikki McCann Ramirez at Rolling Stone on December 15, 2022 is titled Trump’s ‘Major Announcement’ was a scammy, superhero-themed NFT collection and the subtitle explains:

 

“For $99 you can now own a digitally generated image of the former president cosplaying as an astronaut, fighter pilot, sheriff, or red-carpet celebrity”

 

Another article by Rafi Schwartz at The Week on December 15, 2022 titled Trump’s ‘MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT’ was a line of $99 NFT trading cards with ‘no inherent monetary value’ includes images of those cards.The web page for the cards is here.

It’s just another sleazy fund-raising scheme. If you collect 45 cards, then you win a ticket for a dinner with The Donald. Wow!

 

UPDATE

 

The New York Post even ran an editorial late on the night of December 15, 2022 titled Don’t give any money to con artist Trump.  

 

 

Bonnie Raitt’s song Just Like That tells how a life can change just in a moment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On August 8, 2022 I blogged about Down the Hall, A poignant song by Bonnie Raitt about a prison hospice. It is the last song on her latest album, titled Just Like That.

 

The five-minute title song is another excellent example of telling a story in only five minutes. You can listen to it and see the lyrics here on YouTube. An review of the album by John Parlees at the New York Times on April 21, 2022 titled Bonnie Raitt faces mortality with compassion and hope explained:

 

“Another kind of solace after death arrives in the quietly poignant title track of ‘Just Like That…,’ also written by Raitt. Its story unfolds at a measured pace. A stranger shows up on the doorstep of a woman who has never stopped blaming herself for the death of her son. The man has sought her out because he’s the one who got her son’s heart as a transplant: ‘I lay my head upon his chest/And I was with my boy again,’ Raitt sings, with sorrow and relief in the grain of her voice.”

 

A long interview with Zane Low, which you also can watch on YouTube, explains how she wrote it by reimagining what she saw in a television news story.  

 

An extremely late comment on one of my blog posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two days ago I received the following comment from someone over in Jakarta, Indonesia:

 

“Nice info! Can’t wait to your next post!”

 

But, what he referred to was my post from way back on June 1, 2009 titled Cluttering is not the same as stuttering. I already have done over 2,270 posts since then. Therefore I put that comment in my spam folder rather than providing a link to his web site by approving it.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Which word would you emphasize?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How you say something matters a lot. As is shown above, depending on which word we emphasize, the sentence: I didn’t say she stole my money can have seven distinctly different meanings. In writing we can show them using italics or color.

 

Where did this example come from first? A search at Google Books got me to it being on page 129 of the 1990 book titled Making Friends, written by Andrew Matthews. It is referenced by Tony Atwood on page 80 in his 1998 book Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Professionals.

 

On the internet it has shown up several times. The first I found was a brief article by Andy Lobban on May 5, 2009 simply titled I didn’t say she stole my money. It also was in an article by Steve Borsch on March 10, 2010 at Connecting the Dots titled Be VERY Careful Using Social Media. Also, it was in an article by Debra Yearwood at CommStorm on March 3, 2014 titled How to Present Data.

 

Get a bird’s eye view of a presentation with a reverse outline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Articles on planning what to write typically say to begin by constructing an outline. But there is another way to use an outline.

 

Wikipedia has an article on Outline which also contains the following description:

 

“A reverse outline is an outline made from an existing work. Reverse outlining is like reverse engineering a document. The points or topics are extracted from the work, and are arranged in their order of presentation, by section, in the outline. Once completed, the outline can be filled in and rearranged as a plan for a new improved version of the document.”

 

This week I am reading Ron Friedman’s 2022 book Decoding Greatness – How the best in the world reverse engineer success. Starting on page 35 he describes agonizing over having to write his first journal (academic magazine) article. Then Ron discussed reading a half-dozen articles by a psychologist he had admired. After he reverse outlined them, he got a blueprint for constructing his own. Notes in the back of his book refer to a post by Aaron Hamburger in the New York Times – Opinionator Blog on January 21, 2013 titled Outlining in Reverse.

 

You can find an excellent discussion in a web page from the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin titled Reverse outlines: a writer’s technique for examining organization. It links to a ten-page .pdf from August 2012 titled Reverse Outlines: Take apart your paper to put it together right.

 

When was reverse outlining used first? I found a discussion of it in Roy Peter Clark’s 2008 book Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, under Tool #24: Work from a plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He says:

 

“…Here was my problem. I could never see far enough ahead to plot what the third part of section C was going to be. I had to write my way to that point; I had to discover what I was going to say. And so, as a survival mechanism, I invented the reverse outline. I would write a full draft of the story and then create the outline. This turned out to be a useful tool: if I could not write the outline from the story, it meant that I could not discern the parts from the whole, revealing problems of organization.”

 

I used a cropped version of Theodore Robinson’s 1889 painting of A Bird’s Eye View from Wikimedia Commons.