Trying to break a Guinness World Record for speeches given in 24 hours

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until today I was not aware there is a Guinness World Record for the number of speeches given in 24 hours. Then I saw an article by Jon Anderson in the Hoover Sun on April 29, 2023 titled Hoover man seeks to break speech Guinness World Record. (Hoover is a city in north central Alabama with a population of ~93,000 and is located near Birmingham). The article explains:

 

“Patrick O’Mara is a subrogation analyst for the State Farm insurance company who has a side business providing training in public speaking, wants to break the Guinness record of 30 speeches in 24 hours, which was set in Gujarat, India by a man named Piyush Vyas. O’Mara’s goal is to do 40 speeches in 24 hours, and his target date is June 8.  

 

There are certain conditions that must be met for each speech to qualify for the Guinness World Record. Each speech must be an unscripted, unique speech that lasts for at least 10 minutes, which means that he can’t give the same presentation 40 times, or even twice.

 

Each speech must be in a different venue, and each venue must be capable of seating at least 50 people. Also, there must be at least 10 people in the audience at each speech, with no duplicate audience members.”

 

The article explained that Patrick was practicing by drawing topics from a box of fortune cookies.

 

Club meetings of Toastmasters International have a one-to-two-minute impromptu speaking portion called Table Topics. There is another article by Elaine Lung at District 101 Toastmasters on January 9, 2022 titled Impromptu Speaking: It’s Easier Than You Think. She mentions several possible speech structures, and the ten-minute version for Guinness can use similar ones.

 

Back on September 22, 2010 I blogged about a simple way to keep track of an impromptu speech in a post titled Getting a hand on your impromptu speech. That ‘Handi-speech’ techniques by Lori Gracey also is discussed here and here.

 

My impression of the world record trophy was adapted from one at Openclipart.  

 

Donald Trump recently told us the wrong yardstick for the 2020 presidential election

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Daniel Dale at CNN on April 25, 2023 is titled Fact Check: Trump, in 2023, tells a new lie about the 2020 election. Mr. Dale tells us that:

 

“In a speech to a Republican gathering in Florida on Friday, during which he repeated his usual lie that the 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen,’ Trump pointedly noted that Biden got more votes than Trump in fewer than a fifth of US counties in 2020. Trump then said, ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before. Usually it’s very equal, or – but the winner always had the most counties.’ ”

 

As shown above in a pair of bar charts, in 2020 Biden only won ~17% of the counties, while in 2016 Trump won ~84% of them. At the end of his article Mr. Dale points out that Obama only won ~28% of the counties in 2008, and ~22% of the counties in 2012. The winner only had the most counties in 2016 (one of the last four elections), as described in an article by Kin LaCapria at Snopes on December 2, 2016.

    

Mr. Dale quoted William Frey, a senior fellow from the Brookings Institution, who said in an email that:

 

“There is nothing suspicious about winning the presidency with a smaller number of counties. Counties vary widely in size, with large urban counties – where Biden did best – housing far larger populations than most of the outer suburb, small town and rural counties that Trump won."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s look at the four counties with the largest populations, as are shown above in a bar chart. (They came from the Wikipedia page with a List of the most populous counties in the United States). Biden won all of them, as can be seen in the Wikipedia pages with election results for the states of Arizona, California, Illinois, and Texas.I also have shown the smallest county in the same state. Biden won Alpine County, and Trump won the other three. The total for four counties with largest populations is 24,441,263 (about 7.4% of the U.S. population), and the total for four with smallest is just 14,570.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The electoral college results, shown above in a bar chart, are the right yardstick for the 2020 presidential election. Using the number of counties won is about as silly as claiming the winner for each game in the World Series should be based on the number of strikeouts (a measure of pitching) rather than the number of runs scored (a measure of hitting).

 

The joy of segmenting markets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wife prefers chewable multivitamin gummies, as shown above. (Since she has arthritis, I removed the outer layer from the child-proof cap).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I went to get another bottle at Albertsons, I noticed there were four demographic kinds of market segmentation.  As shown above, they are both by gender (Women or Men) and age (Everyone or Mature). Are those that all the possible market segments?

 

No, because gummies contain animal-based gelatin. There also could be another version without pork-based gelatin – for Jews and Muslims who keep Kosher or Halal. Still another version could be for vegans, with agar rather than gelatin.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foods can have lots of market segments. For example, there originally just were Ritz Crackers, as shown above. But there currently are eight Original flavors, and another seven Crisps & Thins:

 

Ritz Crackers – Original   8 flavors

 

Everything - 13.7 oz

Garlic Butter - 13.7 oz

Honey Wheat - 13.7 oz

Hint of Salt - 13.7 oz

Original – 10.3 oz, 13.7 oz, 20.5 oz

Reduced Fat – 12.5 oz

Roasted Vegetable – 13.3 oz

Whole Wheat - 12.9 oz or 20.5 oz (1.28 lb)

 

Ritz Crisp & Thins   7 flavors

 

Barbecue – 7.1 oz

Cheddar – 7.1 oz

Cream Cheese & Onion – 7.1 oz or 10 oz

Jalapeno Cheddar – 7.1 oz

Original – 7.1 oz or 10 oz

Salt & Vinegar – 7.1 oz

Tabasco – 7.1 oz

 

And Cheerios cereals amazingly come in eighteen different flavors:

 

Apple Cinnamon

Blueberry

Chocolate

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Cinnamon

Frosted

Honey Nut

Honey Nut Medley Crunch

Honey Vanilla

Multigrain

Oat Crunch Almond

Oat Crunch Berry

Oat Crunch Cinnamon

Oat Crunch Oats ‘N Honey

Original

Pumpkin Spice

Strawberry Banana

Very Berry

 

The 1939 Ritz Crackers ad came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Getting creative ideas for speeches and writing from a book on How to Be Weird by Eric G. Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the new books shelf at my friendly, local public library I found and greatly enjoyed reading Eric G. Wilson’s 2022 book, How to Be Weird – which is subtitled An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life. Eric is an English professor at Wake Forest University. He teaches Creative Writing and British Romantic Poetry. This book has 99 exercises. Their length averages just a couple of pages. At the back there is a section of further notes, labeled Resources. Ten examples are:

 

Arrange a Wunderkammer (#7), reprinted at Better Humans

Haunt Your Haunts (#18), reprinted at Residence 11

Fabricate a Story That Has Never Existed before (#28)

Review Books That Do Not Exist (#29)

Conceive a Curse Word (#33)

Hatch an Aphorism (#34)

Cop a Deadpan (#46)

Watch Strangers Watch You (#47)

Glance Askance (#92)

Author Your Own Lexicon (#98)

 

Author Your Own Lexicon begins:

 

“Shakespeare invented some 1,700 words. He reveled in anthimeria (turning nouns to verbs, verbs to adjectives), portmanteaus (pressing two words into one, like ‘glare and ‘gaze’ into ‘glaze’), attaching prefixes and suffixes, and neologisms (made-up words), such as ‘lonely and ‘elbow.’

 

One source of this fecundity was Shakespeare’s historical moment. The poet lived when English dictionaries and grammars were scarce, and the lack of rules invited innovation. The poet also composed in iambic pentameter, and so needed five stresses and ten syllables for each line; if an existing word didn’t flow into the music, why not conjure a new one?

 

Historical context aside, Shakespeare did what all original writers do: make words for feelings not yet named. This can be a political act. The rules of language support cultural hierarchies: those in power dictate what one can say or can’t. Writers fighting oppression articulate the silenced emotions. Expressing the unsaid sometimes requires new words.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 27, 2014 I blogged about how you could Have fun making up new words!, and had a cartoon image for my acronym YAKWIRM.

 

An xkcd comic strip had once mentioned:

 

“…odds of getting shot by a swimming dog carrying a handgun in its mouth.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On August 30, 2013 I did a post on Uncommon Fears where I assembled a bogus, Greek compound  -phobia word to describe the fear of it: hoplocynohydrophobia. So far no one else has used it.

 

 

My second Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 2020 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article by Kate McCLare titled True Lies, which discusses Tall Tales speech contests. On August 23, 2020 I blogged about My Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest. That first speech came in third at Pioneer Club. This year I tried a Tall Tale contest speech again, and got further, as shown above. My title was Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny? This speech had lots of deadpan humor and numerous props.

 

The first time I gave it was on February 22, 2023 at Pioneer Club. No one else competed, so I won by default. I went on to the Area 3 contest on March 25, 2023 and won (over one other contestant). For feedback I gave it again on April 5, 2023 at Pioneer Club. Then, in the Division A contest on April 15 I competed again, but came in fourth out of four, and only received a Certificate of Participation.

 

This speech topic goes way back on my blog. It begins on June 30, 2008 with a post titled Daddy, where do “Table Topics” questions come from? The full story first shows up on September 27, 2008 in another post titled Tales of the Table Topics Bunny and the Jackalope. In that version the back story for the Table Topics Bunny included eight children (four girls and four boys). A cartoon of the bunny carrying a basket of questions appeared almost a decade later, in yet another post on February 24, 2018 titled Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

For this year, I brought the number of bunny girls and boys up to five of each, so I could count them off on the fingers of each hand. One of the girls plays the role of the Energizer Bunny in TV commercials.

 

For the first version at Pioneer Club the only props were a couple of sheets of paper with a cartoon image of the Table Topics Bunny and one of the Energizer Bunny. Then I gave the speech to the Surpassing Excellence Academy advanced club on Zoom. My audience suggested that I instead needed to ‘be the Bunny’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I went to the Zurchers party store in Boise, and bought both blue and pink bunny ears. I borrowed a woven basket from my wife. White half-inch thick insulation foam was made into a stack of Table Topics Questions. On eBay I got some 10” wide pink gag sunglasses. At the Idaho Youth Ranch I got a 13” diameter cylindrical carboard box, which I spray painted white and fluorescent pink to make a drum. My drum stick actually was an inflatable microphone, which I had blogged about in a post on October 1, 2021 titled Inexpensive inflatable props for speeches. All those props are shown above. 

 

The final script [with prop use shown in brackets] is as follows:    

 

Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

Fellow Toastmasters. If you have small children, then eventually you will get asked:

 “Daddy, where do Table Topics Questions come from?”

 

We reply that the Table Topics Bunny brings them. [Put on blue bunny ears]. February 22nd is the birthday of Toastmasters founder, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley. That is when the Table Topics Bunny hops by and visits the homes of lucky Toastmasters. The Bunny reaches into his big basket, and leaves them a stack of questions. [Pick up basket, walk across stage, and pull out a stack of questions].There are more than enough to last for the whole year. When I looked in my office that morning, I found a new pile on my credenza.

 

The Table Topics Bunny is named Harvey, and his wife is Barbie. They live near San Diego and are proud of all ten of their children. The five blue boy bunnies are Bruce, George, John, Paul, and Ringo. [Take off blue bunny ears, and put on pink bunny ears]. The five pink girl bunnies are Amy, Britney, Lindsey, Miley, and Taylor. Britney plays a role in TV commercials that is much better known than the Table Topics Bunny.

 

Bruce originally was chosen as a famous mascot, the Energizer Bunny. Then lawyers for an ice cream maker objected. They said WE had trademarked a Blue Bunny for OUR advertising back in 1935, and YOU can’t have one too. Bruce suggested that they use his pink sister Britney instead. She got the job, but due to an oversight the ad copy never was fixed to read that SHE just keeps on going. [Put on pink prop sunglasses].

 

Britney learned to play the bass drum for her junior high school marching band. The sandals, shades, and attitude came later in high school when she started to hang out with the bad beach bunnies. Then Britney headed up to Hollywood to become a singer and actress. [Pick up drum and drumstick, and walk across stage beating the drum].  She just keeps going and going because she has stimulant abuse issues with diet pills. Reportedly Britney again is in rehab somewhere near the Energizer headquarters in St. Louis.

[Take off pink bunny ears, and put on blue bunny ears]. What do you think of the Table Topics Bunny? Does he sound like a Tall Tale? Was he just made up to put something in the calendar between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?

 

Some of you want to ask why you weren’t visited by the Table Topics Bunny. That’s simple. Think about another holiday. Do you remember the Peanuts Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? Just like the Great Pumpkin, you have to sincerely believe in the Table Topics Bunny. Otherwise, he won’t visit you. So, do you truly, sincerely, believe? Fellow Toastmasters.

 

SpaceX Starship rocket has a "rapid unscheduled disassembly"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The SpaceX Starship is a very impressive, 390-foot-high, super-heavy launch vehicle. Minutes after its test launch on April 20, 2023 the first, unmanned Starship exploded. Rather than simply say exploded, SpaceX used the public relations euphemism ‘‘rapid unscheduled disassembly.” It was described in an article by Tariq Malik and Mike Wall at Space.com titled SpaceX’s 1st Starship launches on epic test flight, explodes in ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’.

 

On April 22, 2019 I blogged about them previously using another euphemism for a Crew Dragon problem in a post titled Incident and anomaly just are weasel words for failure.

 

When I saw a video of the SpaceX Starship explosion, I immediately thought instead of a plain English description repeatedly used by John Candy and Joe Flaherty in a comedy routine on SCTV called the Farm Film Report. While dressed in overalls, they proclaimed the punchline that:

 

“He blowed up. He blowed up real good!”  

 

A three-minute SCTV video example has Catherine O’Hara playing Brooke Shields.

 

The Starship image was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

The Judson Welliver Society is an exclusive group of former presidential speechwriters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I was doing more research about speech writing in the EBSCOhost database from my friendly local public library (via LiLI). I found an article by Terry Edmonds in the Washington Monthly on June 20, 2022 titled Why we need speechwriters who look like America. Terry mentioned his being inducted into an organization I had never heard of, The Judson Welliver Society. He was Bill Clinton’s chief speechwriter and the first African-American presidential speechwriter. Hendrick Hertzberg had another article in the Washington Post on October 20, 1985 titled In Praise of Judson Welliver.

 

Judson Churchill Welliver worked for Warren G. Harding, and was the first man to hold the title of presidential speechwriter. My cartoon of a labeled door just is a joke – that social club doesn’t have an office. There once was a Judson Welliver Project, but I couldn’t find a good public-domain photo of Judson there or in the Wikipedia article on him.  

 

There is a C-Span Classroom article (for social studies teachers) on November 3, 2022 titled Lesson Plan: So you want to be a presidential speechwriter? It has the following 13 brief video clips (adding to a total of almost 67 minutes):

 

Relationship Between Ideas and Speeches - 5:05

The Role of Audience - 3:43

Best and Worst Settings - 8:33

The Correspondents’ Dinner - 2:48

Excerpt of Dick Cheney’s Speech - 3:16

Excerpt of Barack Obama’s 2011 Speech - 3:44

Framework for Speeches - 9:47

Foreign or Domestic - 5:31

The Voice of the President - 2:44

Excerpt of Barack Obama’s 2017 Speech - 3:48

The Draft Process - 4:12

Influence and Challenge - 9:31

Practicing Presidents - 5:01

 

There is another C-Span Classroom article on March 6, 2016 titled Bell Ringer: Presidential Speechwriting with a ten-minute video clip from Dr. Craig Smith on his Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. Craig Smith also has a 55-minute YouTube video at The Dole Institute of Politics [University of Kansas] titled The Craft of the Presidential Speechwriter.

 

What other exclusive groups are there for public speakers?  Toastmasters International has the designation of Accredited Speaker, and their profiles page lists just 39 of them. The National Speakers Association has the coveted designation of NSA Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). I found undated estimates that there are approximately 600 or less than 1000 of them.

 

The door was adapted from Openclipart.

 

A great video course on Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a couple decades much of what I did as a metallurgical engineering consultant involved failure analysis – figuring out why things busted or rusted. Recently I saw that The Great Courses had a new one (released in 2022) by Stephen Ressler titled Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach. I put it on hold from the Ada Community Library, and greatly enjoyed watching all 26 lectures on 5 DVDs. Professor Ressler is a great storyteller, and uses excellent simplified working models that show how the structures were meant to work, and how they instead failed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For example, on July 17, 1981 in Kansas City, collapse of the walkways in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency Hotel killed 114 people. A design detail change (shown above) that doubled the load applied to steel support rods hanging the beams was not caught, due to a series of failures of both communication and coordination.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How the process of structural design should work is shown above via a chart (adapted from one in the course). The structural response was tragically underestimated.

 

What the structural engineer had designed would have been very difficult to build. The steel fabricator proposed a change, and spoke with the structural engineer’s project manager. He asked them to put it in writing, but they didn’t, and he forgot to follow up on their shop drawing. Then the steel fabricator hired an outside engineering firm, who assumed the hanger connection already had been analyzed, and never checked it. The fabricator sent the completed drawings to the structural engineer. Drawings instead were reviewed by a senior technician who hadn’t previously worked on the project. He was unaware of the changed configuration, and didn’t raise concerns about it. It also was missed in a design review by Kansas City Public Works.

 

Each of the 26 lectures could be the basis for a speech about failure analysis. Titles for those lectures are as follows (with dates and links to the appropriate Wikipedia pages from their List of structural failures and collapses):

 

1] Learning from Failure: three vignettes [Hurricane Katrina, the Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse, and the Dee Bridge Collapse]

 

2] Flawed Design Concept: the Dee Bridge [1847]

 

3] Wind Loading: The Tay Bridge [1879]

 

4] Rainwater Loading: Kemper Arena [1979]

 

5] Earthquake Loading: The Cypress Structure [1989]

 

6] Vehicle Collisions: The Sunshine Skyway Collapse [1980] and The Skagit River Bridge Collapse [2013]

 

7] Blast Loading: The Murrah Federal Building [1995]

 

8] Structural Response: The Hyatt Regency Walkways [1981]

 

9] Bridge Aerodynamics: Galloping Gertie [Tacoma Narrows Bridge 1940]

 

10] Dynamic Response: London’s Wobbly Bridge [Millennium Footbridge 2000]

 

11] Dynamic Response: Boston’s Plywood Palace [John Hancock Tower 1973]

 

12] Stone Masonry: Beauvais Cathedral [1284]

 

13] Experiment in Iron: The Ashtabula Bridge [1876]

 

14] Shear in Concrete: The FIU Pedestrian Bridge [2018]

 

15] House of Cards: Ronan Point [1968]

 

16] Brittle Fracture: The Great [Boston] Molasses Flood [1919]  

 

17] Stress Corrosion: The Silver Bridge [1967]

 

18] Soil and Settlement: The Leaning Tower of Pisa [1990]

 

19] Water in Soil: The Teton Dam Collapse [1976]

 

20] Construction Engineering: Two Failed Lifts – Senior Road Tower [1982] and L’Ambiance Plaza collapse [1987]

 

21] Maintenance Malpractice: The Mianus River Bridge [1983]

 

22] Decision Making: The [Space Shuttle] Challenger Disaster[1986]

 

23] Nuclear Meltdown: Chernobyl [1986]

 

24] Blowout: Deepwater Horizon [2010]

 

25] Corporate Culture: The Boeing 737 MAX [2019]

 

26 Learning from Failure: Hurricane Katrina [2005]

 

My only major criticism of the course concerns Lecture 17, Stress Corrosion: The Silver Bridge. Failure of a single eyebar, via growth of a hidden small crack, led to a complete collapse because there was no structural redundancy.

 

The Glossary in the Course Guidebook gives the following incorrect definition for stress corrosion:

 

“A phenomenon in which the gradual accumulation of corrosion product (rust) within the grain boundaries of a metal causes tiny cracks to form. Stress corrosion occurs when the metal is subjected to tension stress in a corrosive environment.”

 

For stress corrosion cracking the crack path can be either along the grain (crystal) boundaries or across the crystals (transgranular). For chlorides in stainless steels, it commonly is across, as discussed in the web page at Corrosion Doctors for Stress Corrosion Cracking. Also see the Corrosion Doctors web page for the Silver Bridge Collapse, and the Wikipedia page on Stress corrosion cracking.   

 

Images of the Hyatt Regency Walkway collapse and connection details both came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

Comparing apples and oranges: taking data from two different surveys - when you already have all the data you need in one of them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At LinkedIn Pulse on March 27, 2023 there is a long article (almost 4900 words) by Ella Ray titled Public Speaking or Death? Why Most People Would Choose the Latter.

 

In her first section, she says that:

 

“You’re not alone. In fact, studies show that 75% of people have a fear of public speaking. That’s more than the number of people who are afraid of spiders, snakes, and even death!

 

This fear is known as ‘glossophobia,’ and it can manifest as a fear of speaking in front of large groups of people, fear of being judged or evaluated, or fear of making mistakes.

 

According to a 2020 survey by Chapman University, 20.3% of Americans are afraid or very afraid of dying. The fear of death is also known as ‘thanatophobia,’ and it can manifest as a fear of one’s own death, a fear of the death of loved ones, or a fear of the unknown aspects of death.

 

This means that Americans are more afraid of speaking in public than of death.”

 

But, when you look up the Chapman University blog post titled America’s Top Fears 2020/2021, you will instead find these three percentages listed:

 

FEAR

People I Love Dying: 58.5%, ranked #2 of 95  

Dying: 29.3%, ranked #53

Public Speaking: 29.0%, ranked #54

 

Twice as many people feared People I Love Dying as feared Public Speaking! And the percentage for Dying (29.3, not 20.3) just was very slightly above that for Public Speaking (29.0, not the 75 from elsewhere).

 

Ella said that Americans are more afraid of public speaking than death, and one of the sections in her article is titled Why Is Public Speaking So Scary? That’s not what data in the Chapman Survey tell us. People actually are only slightly afraid of public speaking. On September 26, 2021 I blogged about how Fear of public speaking was only ranked #54 out of 95 fears in the 2020/2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears. In that post I showed how to use the detailed results in their survey to calculate Fear Scores on a scale from one to four, where 1 = Not Afraid at All, 2 = Slightly Afraid, 3 = Afraid, and 4 = Very Afraid.

 

Those scores are as follows:

 

People I Love Dying:  2.744

Dying: 2.072

Public Speaking: 2.023

 

Cartoon images of an apple and an orange both came from Openclipart.

 

UPDATE April 18, 2023

I posted a comment on Ella's article with a link to this blog post, but she deleted it. 

 

Detailed tips for effective oral presentations in research

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On February 5, 2023 I blogged about Reducing excessive use of filler words in scientific speech. In that post I discussed a 2022 article by Douglas R. Seals and McKinley E. Coppock in Advances in Physiology Education.

 

There is a broader article by Professor Douglas R. Seals in the American Journal of Physiology (Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology) for August 29, 2022, on pages R496 to R511 titled Talking the talk: Tips for effective oral presentations in biomedical research. He provides us with a very detailed perspective, based on his having given about 275 invited presentations over almost four decades. Headings in that article are as follows:

 

INTRODUCTION

 

IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE ORAL PRESENTATION SKILLS

 

OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP EFFECTIVE ORAL PRESENTATION SKILLS

 

Options for gaining experience

Within the laboratory.

Within your classes.

Research trainee’s seminar series.

Research conferences.

Community presentations.

 

Sources of Guidance, Feedback, and Inspiration

Professional organizations.

Mentors and senior colleagues.

Instructors and courses.

Inspiring speakers.

 

BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO PRESENT

 

Enough data?

Enough Time to Prepare?

Presentation Topic Versus Setting: Goodness of Fit?

Potential Benefits of Accepting -Or Downsides of Declining – An Invitation

 

DEVELOPING YOUR PRESENTATION

 

General Concepts

Create a preparation timeline.

Keep it simple.

Less is more.

Address the broad range of the audience.

Problems, limitations, and alternative approaches.

 

Specific Slide-Development Suggestions

Acknowledgements

 

“DELIVERING THE GOODS”

 

Preparing for Your Presentation

Practice, practice, practice.

When practicing: clearly describe the content of each slide.

When practicing: minimize the use of “fillers”.

When practicing: slide-to-slide “transitions” are key.

When practicing: face the audience.

 

Prepresentation Particulars

Share presentation materials beforehand.

Avoid “Mac attacks.”

Projection systems are not foolproof.

Get to know your podium technology before you start speaking.

If asked, use the microphone.

 

During Your Formal (Didactic) Presentation

Speak at a deliberate pace.

Speak in a relaxed, conversational manner.

Greet, speak to, and monitor the entire audience.

Establish an effective presentation “tone.”

Use your slides as notes.

Be careful paraphrasing text on slides.

React to unexpected disruptions.

Use the “pointer” judiciously.

Microphone tips.

Have a drink and lozenge available.

Enjoy the moment.

 

Postpresentation Q&A Period

What is the question?

Don’t rush the response.

Keep it brief.

Qualify your response.

Be ready for questions regarding future directions.

 

Considerations for Effective Virtual Presentations

 

AUDIENCE “GOOD WILL”

The Concept

Good Will-Depleting “Cardinal Sins” To Avoid

 

SYNOPSIS

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

DISCLOSURES

 

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

 

REFERENCES

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Eight key steps for successful speechwriting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Indeed [Career Guide, Canada] on March 19, 2023 there is an excellent brief article titled The 8 Key Steps to Successful Speech Writing (With Tips). Those steps are:

 

1]  Choose an important topic

2]  Consider your audience

3]  Prepare a structure

4]  Begin with a strong point

5]  Use concrete details and visual aids

6]  Include a personal element

7]  Consider rhetorical devices

8]  End memorably

 

Under #7, their list of rhetorical devices includes alliteration, anadiplosis, antimetabole, antithesis, asyndeton, metaphor, and simile. Back on December 14, 2015 I blogged about The joy of metaphor, but have not discussed the other rhetorical devices beginning with an A.

 

 

Quack Quack: the threat of pseudoscience, a 2022 book by Dr. Joe Schwarcz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Schwarcz is a professor at McGill University in Montreal. He directs the McGill Office for Science and Society (OoSS), writes a newspaper column titled The Right Chemistry in the Montreal Gazette, and is the author of numerous books. His most recent book is Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience. I saw a review of it by the late Harriet Hall at Science Based Medicine on January 3, 2023. None of the public libraries in the Treasure Valley bought a copy, so I recently did at Amazon. Most of the chapters in the book are about three pages long, and thus easy to read. They typically had appeared as articles, either at the web site for the McGill Office for Science and Society or columns in the Montreal Gazette (sometimes accompanied by YouTube videos). Here are five examples from the book.

 

My favorite article, on pages 144 to 147, is titled The Curious “Science” of Oscillococcinum, and also appeared on March 20, 2017 at OoSS, and in a YouTube Video from the Montreal Gazette titled Dr. Joe Schwarcz: He’s no quack. That product is a homeopathic remedy for flu-like symptoms produced by Boiron - made from the liver and heart of a duck. Those ‘meats’ are diluted by a factor of a hundred in water, and the process repeated 200 times. Then the solution is dripped onto sugar pellets. The so-called ‘active ingredient’ is present at a ludicrously small level – one in ten to the four-hundredth power.

 

I was disgusted to find Oscillococcinum on sale at my local Walgreens pharmacy. The package and web site say the allegedly inactive ingredients are lactose and sucrose, and cryptically describe the active ingredient in Latin just as:

“Anas barbariae 200CK – To reduce the duration and severity of flu-like symptoms”

 

Right before it, on Pages 142 to 144 is another article titled Natural Fallacies, which you can also find at the Montreal Gazette on September 30, 2016 as an article titled The Right Chemistry: “Natural is better’ is a myth, and a five-minute YouTube video titled Dr. Joe Schwarcz on the misuse of the word natural.

 

Yet another article on pages 83 to 85 on a silly gizmo is titled Alpha Spin Can Make Your Head Spin. It had appeared at the Montreal Gazette on August 2, 2019 as an article titled The Right Chemistry: Secret to longevity can’t be bought online. There is a three-minute YouTube video titled Dr. Joe Schwarcz on the questionable miracle of the “Alpha Spin.” 

 

Still another article on pages 91 to 93 is titled Jilly Juice. It also had appeared in the Montreal Gazette on June 1, 2018 as an article titled The Right Chemistry: Beware of self-proclaimed health experts and as a four-minute YouTube video titled Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Don’t buy the cabbage juice hype.

 

And finally, on pages 174 to 178, there is an article titled Medical Medium. It also had appeared in the Montreal Gazette on March 1, 2019 as an article titled The Right Chemistry: No, celery juice is not a cure-all and as a four-and-a-half minute YouTube video titled Dr. Joe Schwarcz on celery juice and “miracle” cures. (Watch Joe's right thumb!)