A thoughtful article by Chris MacLeod on the pros and cons of joining Toastmasters International

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Succeed Socially on May 23, 2022 Mr. Chris MacLeod has a balanced and thoughtful 2500-word article titled Pros and Cons of Toastmasters. He covers each of the following 18 topics with a brief paragraph (or two or three):

 

BENEFITS OF TOASTMASTERS

 

It’s an extremely safe, supportive, encouraging environment.

 

It’s very affordable.

 

It’s not just about giving formal pre-written, rehearsed speeches.

 

You can get lots of constructive feedback on your speaking style.

 

You can choose what facets of public speaking you want to work on.

 

It provides the kind of general social opportunities joining any club does.

 

 

WAYS TOASTMASTERS MAY NOT BE A FIT FOR EVERYONE

 

Toastmasters isn’t an all-around social skills class.

 

Every club is different. Some may not be what you’re looking for. Members may not be that experienced or helpful, and try to push you in a direction you don’t want to go.

 

Toastmasters can over-emphasize how to deliver a speech, and ironing out little mistakes and tics, rather than having engaging ideas to share.

 

Toastmasters can encourage an expressive, theatrical style of speaking that doesn’t translate to everyday situations.

 

Members can be too supportive with their feedback, and afraid to give harsher critiques.

 

You may not get to do a ton of speaking each meeting, which might not be enough practice for what you’re trying to achieve.

 

It’s a fair amount of work to write and rehearse a series of speeches.

 

Table Topics can seem really daunting at first, but after a while it can seem like a glorified improv game that doesn’t carry over into real life as much as you first assumed.

 

 

A FEW MORE SUBJECTIVE REASONS TOASTMASTERS MAY NOT BE EVERYONE’S CUP OF TEA

 

Toastmasters meetings can feel rigid, overly structured, and full of fluff.

 

The supportive, upbeat atmosphere can feel fake, insincere, and cloying at times.

 

Lots of roles need to be filled each meeting, and in smaller clubs you’ll often have to take one. You can’t just hang back and watch.

  

Toastmasters meetings are a tad corny.

 

 

Chris’s site also has an update page listing his other recent web pages.

 

If you find that club members seem too supportive with feedback, then you might be able to find an Advanced club with more experienced members willing to share their ideas for improvement. On May 2, 2022 I blogged about the Advantages of receiving multiple speech evaluations in Advanced Toastmasters Clubs. And on January 15, 2021 I blogged about how Toastmasters also is for professional speakers, like NSA members.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this image at Wikimedia Commons.  

A fascinating 2022 book by Randall Munroe titled what if? 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friendly local public library got in Randall Munroe’s 2022 book titled what if? 2 (additional serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. I have enjoyed reading it for his combination of physics, engineering, and droll humor. Here is one example from pages 268 to 271 which is illustrated by seven drawings:

 

“SNOWBALL (#54)

 

What if I tried to roll a snowball from the top of Mount Everest? How big would the snowball be by the time it reached the bottom and how long would it take? – Michaeline Yates

 

When snowballs roll through wet, sticky snow, they grow. For dry snow like what you’d find on Mount Everest, a rolled snowball wouldn’t get bigger; it would just tumble down the mountain like any other object.

 

But even if Mount Everest were covered in the kind of wet snow that made good snowballs, a snowball wouldn’t get that big.

 

A rolling snowball picks up snow and gets bigger, and a bigger snowball picks up more snow. This may sound like a recipe for some kind of exponential growth, but an idealized snowball’s growth actually slows down over time. It keeps getting bigger and wider, but each new meter it rolls adds less to the diameter. The growth slows because the width of the snowball’s track – and thus the amount of snow it picks up - is proportional to its radius, but the surface area the new snow has to cover is proportional to radius squared, which means that each new clump of snow has to be spread out over more area. People use the word ‘snowballed’ to mean ‘grew faster and faster,’ but in a sense the truth is the reverse.

 

Mount Everest is very tall [ 8.85 km], so even with a slowing growth rate, there’s still a lot of room for a snowball to pick up snow. The mountain’s three main faces descend about 5 kilometers before they level off into glacial valleys. In theory, an idealized snowball rolling down a 5-kilometer slope would pass through enough snow to grow to 10 or 20 meters wide by the time it reached the bottom.

 

In practice, it wouldn’t make it more than a few hundred meters, even in perfect wet snow. There’s a limit to how big snowballs can get before they collapse under their own weight. Gravity pulls the edges of a snowball down, so the insides are under tension. If a snowball gets too big, it collapses.

 

Snow has a tensile strength, which means it resists being pulled apart. Its tensile strength isn’t that high – which is why you don’t see a lot of ropes made of snow – but it’s not zero. A typical tensile strength for well-packed snow might be a few kilopascals, which is stronger than wet sand, weaker than most types of cheese, and about 1/10,000 th that of most metals.

 

There’s a number in engineering that measures how long a dangling piece of material can get before snapping under its own weight. It’s called the ‘free-hanging length,’ and it’s a ratio between a material’s tensile strength, density, and gravity.

 

The free-hanging length of a material provides a pretty decent approximation – to within an order of magnitude, at least – of how big a ball of material could get. Its value for snow ranges from less than a meter for fluffy snow to a meter or two for heavy, packed snow.

 

This formula lets us compare different materials. It tells us that the largest snowball would be bigger than the largest ball of sand – which is even weaker than snow and much more dense – but smaller than the largest ball of hard cheese an nowhere near as large as the largest ball of iron. {Sandball 10-15 cm. Snowball 1-2m. Gruyere Cheeseball 8 meters. Ironball 500 meters.}

 

If you look up videos of people rolling large snowballs down hills, you’ll see that they usually break apart when they reach a size of a few meters, just as the formula suggests.

 

But slopes that can support self-growing snowballs are rare, and they’re rare because they can support self-growing snowballs. If a snowball grows while it’s rolling down a hill, it will break apart. A snowball that breaks apart becomes a bunch of little snowballs, which will start to grow, too, just like the original.

 

Congratulations, you’ve invented an avalanche.”

 

On November 2, 2019 I blogged about Randall’s first what if? book in a post titled A thought provoking how to book by Randall Munroe. And on February 7, 2023 I blogged about a comic of his in a post titled An xkcd comic on a size comparison that is unhelpful. 

 

There are a bunch more examples from what if? 2 posted here. One is about how to Catch a Bullet. Another asks How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?  A third is What if Au Bon Pain lost this lawsuit and had to pay the plaintiff $2 undecillion?

 

An image of a brush rest showing Japanese boys rolling a snowball came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Planning a speech on a flipchart (or whiteboard) using sticky notes or note cards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My previous post on February 22, 2023 is titled Use a flipchart, a whiteboard, or a napkin to capture your ideas. What do you do next to shape your ideas into a coherent speech or document? Back on March 17, 2011 I blogged about how to Use a storyboard to organize your presentation. A storyboard is a shorthand visual script. If you have a flipchart or a whiteboard, then you can write each idea down on either a 3” x 3” sticky note or a 3” x 5” sticky note card (as shown above). Then you can easily move those notes around until they tell a clear story. There is an old but excellent article by Marie Wallace at LLRX back on November 1, 1997 titled Guide on the Side – The power of Post-Its: Picture your speech.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you can’t keep a flipchart or whiteboard free, then you instead can use the smaller 1-1/2” x 2” sticky notes inside of a file folder, as shown above (and in my 2011 post). Bert Decker and company have a tool and system based on this called the GRID (a trademark). It is discussed at length in his book You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. They have a four-page .pdf download about it that mentions the acronym SHARP which stands for Stories, Humor, Analogies, References (and quotes), and Pictures (and visuals). They have a blog post on June 20, 2018 titled SHARPen Your Edge, and another single-page .pdf download titled Decker SHARPS - Your cheat sheet & guide.

 

Use a flipchart, a whiteboard, or a napkin to capture your ideas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I usually think of a flipchart as a tool for presenting a speech for a small group. But it also can help you think up new ideas, when you begin writing a speech.

 

I saw an article by Jeffrey Gitomer titled Sales Truths or Sales Consequences. They’re up to you! #656 which contained to following wisdom:

 

“FLIP CHART GOLD

 

I always use a flip chart when I have a new idea or start a new project.

 

The flip chart helps you define and outline ideas and concepts in ways you hadn’t thought of before. As you write each point, you’re spurred on to the next point – and you think ‘Oh, yeah’ while you write furiously. The flip chart is the perfect medium to make a concept transferable to the prospect.

 

NOTE: Flip charts are cheap. They cost between $50 and $200. Are you waiting for the boss to buy you one? Major clue: You have your own money. Start to invest it in the most important person in the world: you.

 

What’s one idea worth? What’s an idea that you capture worth? How many ideas have you lost because you didn’t write them down? The flip chart captures. The flip chart communicates, expands and solidifies plans. The flip chart preserves so you can see what you’ve done and revise your plans.

 

The flip chart is not an option."

 

That advice had appeared in the Grand Rapids Business Journal on November 15, 2004 in an article titled These Nuggets of Wisdom Smooth the Sales Process. You also might use a whiteboard, and then capture an image with the camera on your cell phone.

 

There is another article  titled Waiter, can I have a napkin please? There Jeffrey talks about reading Dan Roam’s 2013 book, The Back of the Napkin. That book is subtitled Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. Jeffrey expanded it to be Capturing thoughts, creating ideas, clarifying ideas, solving problems, and selling ideas with pictures and words. Another June 2, 2008 article by Mr. Gitomer titled Napkin thinking. Paper power. says that he wrote the initial concept for his 2004 The Little Red Book of Selling down on a napkin, and then clarified it on a flipchart. See more about the back story here at Google Books.

 

I blogged about Mr. Gitomer back on May 14, 2012 in a post titled Who invented the flip chart? and also on October 21, 2013 in another post titled A thumb up for Jeffrey Gitomer.

 

The flipchart stand was adapted from Openclipart.

 

Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls ten-foot poles that you couldn’t touch a person with

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You probably have heard the idiom that:

 

“I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.”

 

On February 16, 2023 the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has an article about a product recall titled KLIM recalls backcountry probes due to risk of severe injury or death. These KLIM A300 folding probes are 118” long (almost ten feet). They consist of seven ~17” sections that are supposed to be assembled to form a rigid pole which can be pushed into the snow (as shown above) to locate (touch) someone buried by an avalanche.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The probe design is similar to, but much taller than that for a folding cane used by blind persons, as shown above. Reportedly the probes can fail to operate properly when deployed by rescuers.

 

Images of avalanche probing and a folding cane came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Is that a flipchart or a whiteboard?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decades ago it was easy to distinguish a flipchart from a whiteboard. A flipchart was a pad made from flexible sheets of paper that were written on using permanent markers. Conversely, a whiteboard was a rigid, shiny surface that was written on using dry-erase markers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today there is an overlap where there are special erasable flipchart sheets from suppliers in several countries. From Pacon in the U. S. there are 25” by 30” GOwrite dry erase easel pads. And from Wipebook Corporation in Ottawa, Canada there are 24” by 30” Wipebook flipcharts. Also, from Magic Whiteboard Limited in Worcester, England there are 60 cm by 80 cm (23.6” by 31.5”) Magic Whiteboard sheets. From the Netherlands there are MOYU Flipstone with 65 by 100 cm (25.6” by 39.4”) sheets and Bambook Flip-ever with 59.4 cm by 84 cm (25.4” by 33.1”) sheets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you do not have the lead time to order these special sheets, then you can make your own dry-erase sheets by putting strips of clear packaging tape over standard flipchart paper.

 

How long have erasable flipcharts been around? I found them described in a Training 101 article at the October 1993 issue of Training & Development magazine. A section by Shawn L. Doyle on page 18 titled Ten Tips for Fabulous Flips said under #2:

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reuse the same charts over again? You can. Here are several options: 

If you have a limited number of charts, frame them in clear plastic frames and use a grease pencil to check off major points. After the session, you can wipe off the pencil marks with a soft cloth.

 

Cut long strips of acetate (transparency material) and glue or tape them to the flipchart pages in the areas you want to mark on. Again, use a grease pencil so that you can wipe off your in-class work. The acetate strips are not visible from a distance.

 

Take your flipchart pages to a laminating company and have them laminated. This creates a slick, erasable surface.”

 

Writing and giving an award acceptance speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent article by Patricia Fripp at her web site on August 12, 2022 titled How do you accept an award? Be gracious. Be modest. Be prepared! A briefer version titled How do you accept an award?  just appeared yesterday in the November/December 2022 issue of Speaker Magazine under Q & A TIME (on pages 40 and 41). Fripp also has a five-minute YouTube video.

 

A third article by Emily Sachs in the April 2021 issue of Toastmaster magazine (pages 16 and 17) is titled How to Accept an Award. It is followed by a fourth article from Paul Sterman about speeches at the Oscars (on pages 18 and 19) titled Speechmaking from the Stars.

 

There is yet another article by Eddie Rice at RICE Speechwriting on June 2, 2022 titled Awards Speeches: 7 questions to answer to craft a great acceptance speech.

 

The 1937 portrait of a man holding his trophy came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

How I masked an overly bright LED pilot light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Rolling Stone on February 13, 2023 there is an article by Ryan Bort titled Trump used ‘Classified’ folder as a lamp shade, lawyer says. Trump reportedly did this:

 

“He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night,” Parlatore said. “It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It’s not a classification marking. It’s not anything that is controlled in any way. There is nothing illegal about it.”

 

I have a handset for the landline phone sitting in a charger next to my bed. It has a yellow light (arrow) at the upper left corner that blinks when there is a message. So, I took a piece of black electrical tape, poked a small hole in it with a pin, and mostly covered up that light.    

 

When most people Trump’s age see a blue light, they think of a special in a Kmart store.

 

 

 

Government and media storytelling about a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of February there were lots of questionable articles about a Chinese balloon. Wikipedia has a page titled 2023 China balloon incident.

 

 

It just was a balloon, not an airship (or a blimp)

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an airship as:

 

“a lighter-than-air aircraft having propulsion and steering systems”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, via a recolored drawing, an airship has pointed ends, propellors, and fins. But a silly statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China on February 3, 2023 titled Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Remarks on the Unintended Entry of a Chinese Unmanned Airship into US Airspace Due to Force Majeure instead claimed:

 

“The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure.”

 

DOD News from the U. S. Department of Defense has three mostly good articles. One on February 2, 2023 is titled U. S. tracking high-altitude surveillance balloon, a second on February 3, 2023 is titled General says Chinese surveillance balloon now over center of U. S., and a third on February 4, 2023 is titled F-22 safely shoots down Chinese spy balloon off South Carolina coast.

 

 

The maneuverable surveillance balloon flew at an altitude of about 60,000 feet (11.4 miles)

 

The February 3rd DOD News article opened by stating:

 

“As of noon today, the maneuverable Chinese surveillance balloon, which was over Montana yesterday, was at an altitude of about 60,000 feet and floating over the center of the continental United States in an easterly direction, posing no risk to commercial aviation, military assets or people on the ground, said the Pentagon press secretary.” 

 

Calling it maneuverable is rather questionable. Presumably it can change altitude, and thus catch the different direction of those prevailing winds. Surveillance is a fancy word. Spy would be plain English.

 

 

That balloon drifted at about the speed of a bicycle race on flat ground

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Meredith Deliso at ABC News on February 5, 2023 is titled Timeline: Where the Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted before being shot down. She reported that it was over  Reed Point, Montana on February 1 st at 4:20 PM, and reached Myrtle Beach, North Carolina on February 4 th at 2:39 PM. That is a flying distance of 1813 miles or a driving distance of 1960 miles in ~70 hours, for a speed of 26 to 28 miles per hour. An article by Whit Yost at Bicycling on June 24, 2022 titled What is a pro cyclist’s average speed in the Tour de France? reported that  on flat terrain it is 25 to 28 miles per hour. There was plenty of time to cover up anything we wished to hide from cameras on that balloon.

 

 

If it flew over Idaho, then an A-10 Warthog from the Idaho National Guard would have shot it down

 

An article by Kevin Miller at KIDO TALK RADIO on February 4, 2023 titled 6 Reasons why Idaho would shoot down sneaky Chinese spy balloon claimed that:

 

“…a spy balloon would be shot down if it flew over Idaho.”

 

But, according to the article by Meredith Deliso at ABC News on February 5, 2023 it did reenter U.S. airspace over northern Idaho on January 31 st. Kevin’s article included seven images of A-10 aircraft. And a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for that attack airplane would have revealed its service ceiling is just 45,000 feet – 15,000 feet (2.84 miles) below the 60,000 feet the balloon flew at. The effective firing range for its 30 mm automatic cannon only is 4,000 feet, so it would not have been able to engage the balloon. An F-15E Strike Eagle with a higher service ceiling of 60,000 feet could get into 20 mm cannon range. They are in Idaho with the 366th Fighter Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base.

 

 

An average American could have shot it down with a handgun or rifle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U. S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had tweeted:

"Literally every regular person I know is talking about how to shoot down the Chinese Spy Balloon. It would be great if an average Joe shot it down because China Joe won't. Regular Americans can do everything better than the government and actually care about our country."

But a bullet from a 9mm handgun only can reach a height of 4,000 feet. One from a .30-06 rifle can reach 10,000 feet. One from a 0.50 cal rifle (the most powerful Barrett used by snipers) can reach just 15,000 feet. An article by Thomas Kika at Newsweek on February 4, 2023 is titled Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked by conservatives for Chinese spy balloon idea. After it was shot down, Ciara O’Rourke at Politifact on February 6, 2023 has a fact-check article titled The US government, not a vigilante, shot down a Chinese balloon.

Kevin Miller’s article also made the impractical suggestion that:

“Idahoans would take their large rifles with scopes to the top of the state’s largest mountains to shoot down the balloon.” 

 Our tallest mountain, Mount Borah, is 12,662 feet high. Add 15,000 feet for a 50-cal rifle bullet, and you could shoot 27,662 feet high or less than half the balloon’s 60,000 foot altitude.  

How many times have U. S. aircraft flown over China? 

 

Quite a lot before there was a thaw in our relations with them. For background, look up the Wikipedia page titled 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China. An article by William Beecher in the New York Times on July 29, 1971 titled U.S. spy flights over China ended to avoid incident said that: 

 

“Peking has publicly protested nearly 500 incursions of its air space by United States aircraft.

 

 Images of a weather balloon, an airship, the 2019 Tour de France bicycle race, and a 9mm Glock all came from Wikimedia Commons.   

 

Going from strength to strength later in life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I am a boomer, I have been mostly enjoying reading a 2022 book by Professor Arthur C. Brooks titled From Strength to Strength (Finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life). He has the following nine headings for his chapters:

 

Your professional decline is coming (much) sooner than you think [previously an Atlantic article]

The second curve

Kick your success addiction

Start chipping away

Ponder your death

Cultivate your aspen grove

Start your vanaprastha

Make your weakness your strength

Cast into the falling tide

 

And then his Conclusion is just Seven Words to Remember:

 

Use things. Love people. Worship the divine. 

 

In chapter 2, The Second Curve, he describes how you need to consider adding both fluid intelligence (peaking early in a career) and later rising crystallized intelligence (using a stock of knowledge). Raymond Cattell said fluid intelligence increased to the mid-thirties and declined through the forties and fifties. But meanwhile crystallized intelligence increased through middle and late adulthood. 

 

Chapter 9, titled Cast into the falling tide, includes four lessons:

 

Lesson 1: Identify your marshmallow

Lesson 2: The work you do has to be the reward

Lesson 3: Do the most interesting things you can

Lesson 4: A career change doesn’t have to be a straight line

 

In Lesson 4 he describes four categories for career changes starting on page 209:

Linear careers – which climb steadily upward (with everything building on everything else);

Steady-state careers – involving staying at one job and growing in expertise;

Transitory careers – involving jumping from job to job or even field to field;

Spiral careers – like a series of mini-careers, shifting fields building on previous ones;

 

Since Dr. Brooks is a Harvard Business School professor, he includes references to lots of notes at the back of his book. But sometimes the references diverge from reality. In Chapter 5 (Ponder Your Death), a section titled Understanding the fear of demise begins on page 97 with:

 

“ ‘The idea of death, the fear of it haunts the human animal like nothing else,’ anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his classic 1973 book, The Denial of Death. A majority of people fear death to some extent, and most surveys find that about 20 percent have a high level of fear (Ref. 2). Some people have a fear that is so extremes as to rise to the level of a psychiatric condition known as ‘thanatophobia.’ “

 

However, in 1973 there was a well-known survey by R. H. Bruskin Associates which I blogged about on October 27, 2009 in a post titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? Speaking before a group was the most common fear (40.6%) while death only ranked seventh (18.7%). What about Reference 2? It is to a blog post on October 11, 2016 about the Chapman University Survey of American Fears titled America’s Top Fears 2016. Fear of dying was much lower than in the 1973 survey - it only ranked #59! That was the second Chapman survey of seven including dying. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Detailed results for dying from those surveys are shown above in a table. In 2015 dying ranked #43, and in 2022 is ranked #61! The sum for Very Afraid plus Afraid was 18.8% in 2016, and had a mean of 25.4%.

 

Earlier, in Chapter 2 on page 57 Dr. Brooks says:

 

“Fear of failure has been studied quite a bit. For example, researchers have found the public speaking is college students’ most common fear; some scholars have famously asserted that people fear it even more than death (Ref. 24).”  

 

But the article on college students is incorrectly listed under reference 23. And it is about redoing the 1973 Bruskin survey. (I blogged about it on May 17, 2012 in a post titled More university students in the U. S. fear public speaking than fear death, but death is their top fear). Reference 24 is to an article by Glenn Croston in Psychology Today on November 29, 2012 titled That thing we fear more than death. I discussed Croston’s article in a post on April 25, 2015 titled Is public speaking by far the scariest thing that people face? Even more than death? No, it is not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do the Chapman surveys say about fear of public speaking? A table shown above summarizes the details from all eight of them. In all but the first the fear of public speaking ranks way down – from #26 in 2015 to #59 in 2018. And a > or a < shows whether more or less people fear speaking than dying. Note that more feared it for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2022, but less feared it for 2018, 2019, and 2020-21. Also note that we can have very different percentages depending on the level of fear. For 2022 it is 14.0% for Very Afraid, 34.0% for Very Afraid plus Afraid (what is in the Chapman percentage list) and 69.2% for the grand sum of Very Afraid plus Afraid plus Slightly Afraid.  

 

The image was constructed from a walking man and a table mountain, both at Openclipart.

 

That Joan of Arc theory one more time: Does fear of public speaking comes from a past life having ending badly? No.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Way back on July 9, 2011 I blogged about The Joan of Arc theory: your fear of public speaking comes from how a past life ended badly. Then, on September 30, 2015, I blogged about The Joan of Arc theory again – fear of public speaking comes from being burned in a past life.

 

I found an article by a psychologist who does hypnotherapy and wrote a book, Karen Joy, at Llewellyn on February 21, 2022 titled 10 Signs of Unresolved Past Lives. It has the following section titled Deep Fear of Public Speaking:

“While most of us fear public speaking, some can overcome their fear by taking a practical public speaking course. Others find their dread remains. A traumatic past life could be the cause. Here is an example:

In the past life, the client was a healer tortured to death by inquisitors wanting a confession with the names of associates. Although the healer didn't give anyone up, the client still felt the fear. ‘I feel this life is linked to me holding back, not sharing who I am and not being open. I am still terrified being found out.’ Coming to terms with this challenging life and horrible treatment was the beginning of the client overcoming her fear of publicly sharing her views.”

 

When I looked for a serious and recent article about hypnosis, I found one by Steve Jay Lynn et al in Applied Cognitive Psychology for 2020, (Volume 34, pages 1253 to 1264) titled Myths and misconceptions about hypnosis and suggestion: Separating fact and fiction. An earlier .pdf version is here. Their last topic is 6 | Myths and Misconceptions About Memory, and the last myth is 6.2 Hypnotic age regression can retrieve accurate memories from the distant past. The second (and last) paragraph says:

 

“The popular Dr. Oz show, psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss, who touts the value of ‘past life therapy’ and movies like A Stir of Echoes legitimize past life age regression in popular culture. But research suggests a contrary view. When the accuracy of memories of age regressed subjects is checked against factual information from the suggested time period (e.g., 10th century) the information provided is almost invariably incorrect (Spanos, Menary, Gabora, DuBreuil, & Dewhurst, 1991) and is mostly consistent with information experimenters provide regarding their supposed past life identities (e.g., different race, culture, sex). These findings imply that recall reflects expectancies, fantasies, and beliefs regarding personal characteristics and events during a given historical period.”  

 

The 1835 painting by Adele Martin of Joan of Arc being arrested came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

An xkcd comic on a size comparison that is unhelpful

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Randall Munroe’s xkcd webcomic for February 3, 2023 titled Size Comparisons is shown above (with color added by me). The dialogue says:

 

Cueball: “Texas is so big that if you expanded it to the size of the solar system, the ants there would be as big as Rhode Island.”

 

Ponytail: Wow!

                 …Wait.

 

Enlarging the state takes the comparison in the wrong direction. (Pluto is about 3.7 billion miles from the sun, so that's about 4,620,000 times). To make that size comprehensible it instead should be shrunk down to a more human scale. (Back on July 12, 2016 I blogged about How to make statistics understandable).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to Wikipedia, as shown above, Texas is 773 miles wide by 801 miles high. If you drove  on I-10 from El Paso east to Beaumont, it would take you about 11.7 hours to go 833 miles. If we shrank Texas by 42,000 times, then it would become roughly 100 feet across (97.2 feet wide by 100.7 feet high). For comparison, a basketball court is 94 feet by 50 feet.

 

Wikipedia has a web page about Solar System models. There is one in Boulder, Colorado at the Fiske Planetarium with the following description:

 

“The Colorado Scale Model Solar System depicts the Sun, the planets, and the distances between them all on the same scale of 1 to 10 billion. That is, real objects and distances are 10 billion times larger than objects and distances in the model.

 

On this scale, Sun is about the size of a large grapefruit, while the Earth is the size of the ball point in a pen. It’s 15 big steps from the Sun to Earth, about 75 yards to marble-size Jupiter, and less than a half-mile walk to Pluto, the most distant object shown in the model.”   

 

The Texas map with counties came from Wikimedia Commons.