At Indeed [Canada] on March 19, 2023 there is a good article titled The 8 Key Steps to Successful Speech Writing which contains advice on the following:
Choose an important topic.
Consider your audience.
Prepare a structure.
Begin with a strong point.
Use concrete details and visual aids.
Include a personal element.
Consider rhetorical devices.
End Memorably.
Under Rhetorical Devices there is discussion of:
The cartoon was adapted from this one at Openclipart.
There is an article by Tracy Swartz at the New York Post on February 18, 2024 titled What is ‘popcorn brain’? How social media may be killing your attention span. She quoted clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel Glazer as saying that:
“Popcorn brain refers to the tendency for our attention and focus to jump quickly from one thing to another, like popping corn kernels.”
It’s a very vivid term for describing behavior that does not rise to the level of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. On page 96 in her 2024 book The 5 Resets: Rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resilience Aditi Nerurkar describes A Classic Case of Popcorn Brain as follows:
“Julian was suffering from an increasingly common condition known as popcorn brain. While not a true medical diagnosis, popcorn brain is a growing cultural phenomenon. It’s a term coined by researcher David Levy to describe what happens to our brains when we spend too much time online. Our brain circuitry starts to ‘pop’ from being overstimulated by the fast-paced information stream Over time, our brains get habituated to this constant streaming of information, making it harder for us to look away and disconnect from our devices, slow down our thoughts, and live fully offline, where things move at a much different and slower pace.”
And on pages 103 and 104 she describes how to cure your popcorn brain:
“Aim to spend no more than twenty minutes a day scrolling on your phone. At all other times, use your phone only for essential calls, texts, and email. Set a timer and stay accountable. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re in the digital space.
Opt out of push notifications and automatic pop-up features. Trust that if there’s something you need to know about, you’ll hear about it on your time.
While working, aim to keep your smartphone at least ten feet away from your workstation, At home, consider doing the same, especially when you’re with your family members.
At bedtime, keep your phone off your nightstand. This will help prevent nightime phone checks and also prevent you from reaching for your phone the first thing in the morning. Tell family members or colleagues to call you if there’s an emergency.”
My image was constructed by filling a silhouette of brain activity from Openclipart with an image of popcorn from Wikimedia Commons.
I have not tried them. But at the public library I recently found New York Times book critic Dwight Garner’s 2023 book The Upstairs Delicatessen. It is subtitled On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading. On March 24, 2024 I blogged about his writing about one offbeat combination in a post titled Have you ever eaten a peanut butter and pickle sandwich? Bologna Sandwiches are another offbeat combination, and there is a Wikipedia page about them. On page 103 Mr. Garner said:
“The other sandwich of my West Virginia youth that lives on in my mind, and in my kitchen, to Cree’s dismay, is fried bologna. Robert Sietsema, the great New York City food writer, is a devotee. He once worked in a Texas hospital where there was, amazingly, ‘a hot vending machine that sold nothing but fried baloney sandwiches on biscuits, oozing grease and mustard.’ I’ve scoured eBay for one of these, to no avail. The fried bologna sandwich is probably the sort of dish Jonathan Gold was referring to when he wrote about ‘the secret ethic cooking of the Dumb White Guy.’ But everyone likes them. Henry Louis Gates is an admirer. He grew up in Piedmont, West Virginia, about two hours east of where my family lived. In Colored People, his memoir, he wrote about a brand of bologna I wish I’d known about: Dent Davis’s Famous Homemade Ring Bologna, sold at a bakery. Gates called it ‘one of Piedmont’s singular attractions … dark red, with a tight, crimson, translucent skin.’ “
For nine years I lived in Columbus, Ohio. Forty miles north is the village of Waldo. It is home of the G & R Tavern. There is an article about the sandwich at Roadfood, and also a four-minute YouTube video at WOSU titled G & R Tavern’s Fried Bologna: Historic Idaho Food Establishments – which describes how their famous ‘fried’ (really grilled) bologna round is topped with Monterrey Jack cheese, pickle chips, and onions.
The image from Wikimedia Commons shows a Blue Smoke Bologna Sandwich from Nationals Stadium in Washington, DC.
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I have. Mine are open-faced, topped with bread-and-butter-pickles. My mom had seen them described in an old Heinz cookbook. There even is a Wikipedia page on the Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich.
At the public library I recently found New York Times book critic Dwight Garner’s 2023 book The Upstairs Delicatessen. It is subtitled On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading. On page 101 he discusses on the peanut butter and pickle sandwich:
“Most days, I eat lunch at home. I make do with what’s in the house. Usually that means a sandwich – two pieces of bread, blank canvases, pale Mark Rothko slabs. I can be as geeky as the next person with the jamon iberico, or with the writer Julia Reed’s mother’s tuna salad, but I’m also on the record as being perhaps America’s most ardent consumer of the peanut butter and pickle sandwich.
It's a sandwich that my father bequeathed to me, the thrifty one that got him through law school. I wrote about the combination in 2012 for the Times food section. I called the sandwich the stay-at-home writer’s friend, there for you when nothing else was in the icebox. My essay prompted so much grossing out on social media, then in newspapers worldwide, that I fear that when I die, should I merit even a tiny obituary, the sandwich will be mentioned near the top (‘Dwight Garner, Literary Critic and Champion of Gross Sandwich Dies at 87’). I’ve always assumed that the PB&P was a West Virginia thing, but I’ve been unable to prove it. Neither has Emily Hilliard, the former state folklorist, who tried harder than I did. The sandwich appeared om lunch-counter menus during the Depression and in extension-service cookbooks in the 1930s and ‘40s in recipes that generally called for a few spoonfuls of pickle relish.”
Mr. Garner’s 2012 Times article mentions that Kinsey Millhone, the fictional private investigator in the alphabet series of mysteries by Sue Grafton (all but the letter Z), is probably America’s best-known devotee.
Back on May 16, 2011 I blogged about Is arachibutyrophobia for real? That is a phobia of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. I mentioned the pickles as a remedy.
An image of a sandwich was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
Is that possible? Yes! I found a pair of commencement speeches where rather than provide answers they only had questions. One was given in 2019 by David Glaser at Tufts University. It is described in an article by Joel Abrams at The Conversation on May 16, 2019 titled This commencement speech had nothing but questions. A second, last year for the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, is described in another article by Fred Sanders at LeadingWithQuestions on July 20, 2023 titled A Few Questions For You.
What about poems or songs? William Blake’s 1794 poem The Tyger just is questions. And in her 2023 album A Great Wild Mercy Carrie Newcomer has a song titled A Book of Questions. You can watch a five-minute lyric video for it on YouTube. (The brief chorus is not questions).
How about an entire novel consisting of questions? I have two examples with excerpts at Google Books. From 2001 there is Gold Fools by Gilbert Sorrentino. And from 2009 there is The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell. The Kirkus Reviews article on The Interrogative Mood opens by whining that:
“This novel a one-trick pony, and that trick is a question mark.”
How did I get started on this offbeat topic? At the public library I got Dwight Garner’s 2023 book The Upstairs Delicatessen. On page 108 he says:
“Powell wrote a 164-page novel, The Interrogative Mood, in which every sentence is a question. (Sample: ‘Have you decided yet which historical moment you would most like to have witnessed with your own eyes and ears?’) The form suited Powell, because he’s one of the most inquisitive writers we have.”
An image of a head full of questions was adapted from one at Openclipart.
On March 9, 2024 the BBC radio program More or Less had a nine-minute show titled Is public speaking really our biggest fear? Matt Abrahams asked them this question:
“As someone who teaches communication, we often say that speaking in public is people’s number one fear. But I’m not convinced the research really backs this up. I’d love to hear you do a deep dive into our greatest fears.”
They didn’t clearly explain how there are two distinct questions, with different answers for number one. The more often asked question is about how many – what is the most common fear (a percentage). But a second is about how much – what is the largest fear (a Fear Score on a scale from none to terrified).
Their approach was summarized as:
“For over 50 years it’s been widely reported that speaking before a group is people’s number one fear. But is it really true? With the help of Dr Karen Kangas Dwyer, a former Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and Dr Christopher Bader, Professor of Sociology at Chapman University, Tim Harford tracks the source of the claim back to the 1970’s and explores whether it was true then, and whether it’s true today.”
The abstract for the 2012 magazine article by Dwyer and Davidson, Is Public Speaking Really Feared More Than Death? she discussed, which found death rather than speaking was the biggest fear for students, said:
“The purpose of this study was to investigate the genesis of the 1973 R. H. Bruskin Associate's American Fears study appearing in the London Sunday Times and often reported in communication textbooks as ‘people fear public speaking more than death,’ and to replicate the study among college students who read the textbooks. Participants in a multi-section communication course (N = 815) completed the survey during the first week of class by selecting their fears from a list of fears, ranking their top fears, and completing the 6 public speaking context items of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension–24 items. This study found that public speaking was selected more often as a common fear than any other fear, including death. However, when students were asked to select a top fear, students selected death most often. These findings help authors and instructors aptly quote the 1973 Bruskin Associate's findings, which were confirmed by this study.”
I blogged about that article 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. And October 27, 2009 I blogged about The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?
Christopher Bader is one of the principal investigators for the Chapman Survey of American Fears. In the show he changed the question back to about the most common fear – which is what they have reported in their web articles (the percentage who were Very Afraid plus Afraid). That is not Public Speaking, which he said has never appeared in their Top Ten.
But data in the nine Chapman Surveys also can be used to calculate Fear Scores for U.S. adults. On October 30, 2015 I first blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking. And on October 29, 2017 I blogged about What do Americans fear most? Fear Scores from the 2017 Chapman Survey of American Fears. More recently, on December 6, 2021, I blogged about how Most Americans are not terrified of public speaking.
And on October 20, 2023 I posted about how Corrupt Government Officials (60.1%) was the most common fear in the ninth 2023 Chapman Survey of American Fears. Public speaking only was ranked # 53 (28.7%). As shown above Corrupt Government Officials also had the highest Fear Score – so it was the biggest fear.
All eight times since it appeared on their fears list in 2015 Corrupt Government Officials has topped the list of percentages in the Chapman surveys. (In 2014 they asked another way, and the top fear was Identity Theft/Credit Card Fraud. As shown above in a table, it also was number one for its Fear Score and way outranked Public Speaking.
On November 10, 2015 I also blogged about another set of Fear Scores in a post titled YouGov survey done in 2014 found U.S. adults were less than A Little Afraid of public speaking. Snakes had the highest fear score (2.80), heights was second (2.63), and public speaking was third (2.55).
It’s rather curious that Matt Abrahams decided to finally ask More or Less for an answer. His Think Fast Talk Smart site incorrectly claims:
“….The Book of Lists has repeatedly reported that the fear of speaking in public is the most frequent answer to the question ‘What scares you most?’ ”
And he has also said:
“Research tells us that 85% of people feel anxious when speaking in front of others, and I fully believe that the other 15% are lying.
I blogged about that on September 29, 2020 in a post titled A quantified version of a discredited Mark Twain quotation about fear of public speaking.
The #1 foam finger was adapted from this 1971 image at Wikimedia Commons.
Today’s Savage Chickens cartoon from Doug Savage’s titled Now Taking Orders shows one method for reserving your intimate space - a personal moat. (See the Wikipedia article on Proxemics). But there is a better alternative.
As shown above, a large sombrero works as well as a personal moat, and you don’t need to add water or baby alligators. Back on October 22, 2014 I blogged about Sombreros and proxemics.
The image of a tourist came from Padaguan at Wikimedia Commons.
On May 6, 2022 I blogged about Who popularized the word glossophobia? What is a better Plain English alternative? I suggested ‘speech fright’ would be better. Perhaps even better would be to make it a portmanteau, speechfright. Portmanteau is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:
“…a word or part of a word made by combining the spellings and meanings of two or more words or word parts (such as smog from smoke and fog).”
Stage fright also can get this treatment - becoming stagefright. Wikipedia says that originally:
“A portmanteau is a piece of luggage, usually made of leather and opening into two equal parts.”
I’ve illustrated portmanteau by an anonymous version of the Wikimedia Commons image for a famous medical bag.
I did not. The About page for World Speech Day says it was started by Simon Gibson in 2015 and that:
World Speech Day started with a simple idea: speeches change the world; socially, politically, in the arts, business and religion. They play a profound role in holding our societies together and shaping change. Then why not create a day to celebrate speeches and speechmaking through live public speaking events around the world, reaching out to #unexpectedvouces everywhere?
From my Google Alert on public speaking I found an article about it by Shivangani Singh at TheQuintWorld on March 14, 2024 titled World Speech Day 2024: Date, History, Significance & Ways to Participate. You can find out about other holidays in a reference book at your friendly local public library. See this blog post on June 16, 2017 titled What happened in history on June 16th?
My cartoon was assembled from images of a globe and a speaker silhouette from Openclipart.
There is another fact check article by Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post on March 14, 2024 titled Trump has a bunch of new false claims. Here’s a guide. Seven new ones are:
Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case
The United States is a Third World country
Prisons are being emptied around the world to flood U.S. borders
Congo has released murderers into the United States
15 million migrants have entered the United States under Biden [really 4 to 5 million]
The inflation rate under Biden is 50 percent [cumulatively it is 18.5 percent]
Native-born Americans have lost 1 million jobs to immigrants [it’s half that]
And he continues to repeat seven previous ones:
He created the greatest U.S. economy in U.S. history (not by any metric).
He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).
He did more for Black people than any president than Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).
He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).
He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced U.S. tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).
He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (False).
My ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ cartoon was assembled from trousers and fire at Openclipart.
On January 31, 2024 workers from Big D Builders were erecting the steel frame for a new hangar at the Jackson Jet Center, which is located beside the Boise Airport at 4049 West Wright Street. The hangar was to be 45 feet tall and cover an area of 39,000 square feet. It was about 310 feet wide by 126 feet deep. But around 5:00 PM it collapsed with the trusses changing to the shape of a capital letter M (as shown above in my image), killing three people and injuring another nine.
Some details are discussed in an article by Sally Krutzig in the Idaho Statesman on February 20, 2024 titled Rescue operations at Boise building collapse included 3 people stuck in aerial lifts:
“In his review, Boise Fire Department Training and Safety Capt. Steve Madigan wrote that ‘it appeared that the structure somehow failed at the ridge line and caused all the columns to pull inward.’ Initial reports indicated 16 people were at the scene when the building went down, and police and fire crews helped wounded victims who were able to walk leave the area, according to Madigan. The building’s columns ‘were leaning at 45 degrees (approx.) and the bolts securing them to the ground had either sheared off or tore the bottom flange of the steel as they fell,’ Madigan wrote.”
Another article by Alex Brizee at the Idaho Statesman on March 6, 2024 is titled ‘Did not look right’: Workers flagged concerns before deadly Boise hangar collapse. It includes an overhead drone shot of the collapsed hangar, which has fallen to one side. That suggests a directional load, perhaps due to wind gusts. The article began by stating:
“Several employees who worked at the site of a deadly building collapse on Boise Airport grounds told police they had noticed bending beams, snapped cables and overall structural issues, according to Boise Police Department investigative reports obtained by the Idaho Statesman. Some of these workers informed the site’s supervisor of the concerns the day before the hangar crumbled on Jan. 31, killing three people and injuring nine others. Interviews with employees of Boise-based Inland Crane, which provided equipment and operators for the construction of the Jackson Jet Center hangar, were documented in Boise Police Department reports that were released to the Statesman through a public records request.”
Still another article by Angela Palermo at the Idaho Statesman on February 2, 2024 titled Was it wind? How a bridge’s failure may shed light on fatal Boise Airport hangar collapse includes two images of the framing before the collapse.
OSHA is investigating the collapse and will issue a report within six months. How an investigation proceeds is discussed in yet another article by Kevin Goudarzi at Structure on
March 2023 titled The forensic engineering process for structural failures. On April 17, 2023 I blogged about A great video course on Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach. In that post I discussed the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, where a design detail change doubled the applied load – eliminating the intended factor of safety.
UPDATE
There is an article by NIck Rosenberger at the Idaho Statesman on April 18, 2024 titled Wreckage of the Boise Airport hangar is still standing. Why, and what's coming.
There is a rather silly article by Kyle Matthews at 104.3 Wow Country [KAWO Boise] on March 11, 2024 titled 10 Startling phobias that have a strangle hold on Idahoans. The list is shown above as a bar chart. It’s not from a survey. Rather it’s just a list of how common they were on web searches. (Back on March 7, 2015 I blogged about Is that Top Ten list from a real survey or just a glorified stack of web searches?) The list is clickbait which came from a sports betting web site called BetCarolina, but it is not shown there. Small holes were first, deep water was second, vomiting was third, spiders were fourth, and confined spaces were fifth. Public speaking came in tenth.
Kyle’s filler article has the following paragraph which cites public speaking as first (25.3%) for the sum of Afraid and Very Afraid from the 2014 Chapman Survey, which I blogged about in a post on October 29, 2014 titled Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts:
“Americans grapple with a diverse range of phobias. Notably, fear of public speaking, also known as Glossophobia, stands out as America's most common phobia, affecting a significant 25.3% of the population. Acrophobia, the fear of heights [24.7%], and Entomophobia, the fear of bugs and insects [animals or insects 22.2%] closely follow this. However, an interesting revelation is that nearly one in three U.S. adults confesses to Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes [not even on that list!]. These fears underline the complexity and diversity of phobias prevalent across the country.”
And more careful research instead would have used results from the percent list of fears in the most recent 2023 Chapman Survey.
Also, Kyle’s article confuses fears and phobias, whose difference is shown above in a Venn diagram from my blog post on December 11, 2013 titled Spouting Nonsense: July 2013 Toastmaster magazine article fumbles fears and phobias.
There is an article by Clark Corbin at the Idaho Capital Sun on March 8, 2024 titled New bill would reinstate presidential primary election in Idaho. Last year, when the Idaho legislature passed a bill to move the presidential primary from March to May, it eliminated the primary. Democrats and Republicans instead held caucuses. Donald Trump had a huge Republican win with 84.9% versus 13.2% for Nicki Haley.
Another article by Brian Holmes at KTVB7 on March 8, 2024 is titled Around 6% of registered Republicans took part in Idaho caucus. (More precisely, it was 6.8% or about 1/15th). He pointed out that in 2012, the last time the Republicans held a caucus, 19% had voted.
How many Idahoans voted in previous primaries? Yet another article by Clark Corbin in the Idaho Capital Sun on June 13, 2022 is titled Official voter turnout for Idaho’s May 17 primary election comes to 32.5%. Percentages for that and previous primaries are shown above in a bar chart.
There is stll another article by Brent Regan at the Gem State Patriot News on March 10, 2024 titled Caucus Saboteurs. He pontificated:
“Last Saturday, thanks to efforts by the Idaho Republican Party, nearly 40,000 Idaho Republicans were able to cast their vote for their preferred Presidential Candidate. This could not have happened without the Republican Party acting after the Secretary of State, the legislature and the Governor all agreed to cancel the March Presidential Primary.
…. On Saturday all that effort, planning and expense came to together and by 8:00 PM that night, when the last location reported their results, it was obvious that the caucus was a success.”
Having just a fifteenth of the registered Republican voters turn up cannot be called a success. Maybe a fifth would be.
We are told stories that they came from creative improvisations based on desperation.
Caesar Salad is named after restaurateur Caesar Cardini. The Wikipedia article says:
“His daughter, Rosa, recounted that her father invented the salad at the Tijuana restaurant when a Fourth of July rush in 1924 depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of table-side tossing by the chef.”
And the Fried Pickle may have come from the Hollywood Café, south of Memphis. On a Saturday night the only things left in the kitchen were some batter for frying chicken or catfish - and a jar of pickles. That story is disputed though.
Also, according to another Wikipedia article, Nachos, which have taken over the world:
“… originated in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas in the United States. Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Anaya [shown above] created nachos in 1943 at the restaurant the Victory Club when Mamie Finan and a group of U.S. military officers' wives, whose husbands were stationed at the nearby U.S. Army base Fort Duncan, traveled across the border to eat at the Victory Club. When Anaya was unable to find the cook, he went to the kitchen and spotted freshly fried pieces of corn tortillas. In a moment of culinary inspiration, Anaya cut the tortillas into triangles, fried them, added shredded cheese, quickly heated them, added sliced pickled jalapeno peppers and served them. After tasting the snack, Finan asked what it was called. Anaya responded, "Well, I guess we can just call them ‘Nacho's Special.’ In Spanish, ‘Nacho’ is a common nickname for Ignacio.”
Similarly, Cobb Salad is named after Robert Howard Cobb, the owner of
the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant. In 1938 either he or his chef put it together
for a midnight meal from kitchen leftovers, with freshly cooked bacon added as
a garnish. There is no such thing as leftover bacon!
Images of Caesar Salad and Ignacio Anaya came from Wikimedia Commons.
At the Grocery Outlet I recently bought and enjoyed eating a box of frozen P.F. Chang’s Crispy Green Beans, which (as shown above) are covered with a tempura batter. At BadBatchBaking there is an article titled Crispy Green Beans PF Chang’s Copycat Recipe. Birds Eye also sells frozen Crispy Green Beans. According to Wikipedia, these veggies originated in Portugal as Peixinhos da horta before becoming Tempura in Japan. They are an interesting tasty alternative to French fries.
I was surprised to find that green beans don’t appear in menus as most fast-food restaurants (and neither do carrots, though they are common in Tempura). Why don’t they market this veggie? Both Burger King and Jack in the Box have Onion Rings and Mozzarella Sticks. Carl’s Jr. has Onion Rings and Fried Zucchini. The fast-casual chain Smash Burger just has Onion Rings and Crispy Brussels Sprouts. But the Habit Burger Grill chain has Tempura Green Beans.
Another article at USA Today on July 28, 2023 titled Crazy Good: 10 fast food sides that will blow your mind has the following list:
Fried Okra – Golden Chick
Wisconsin Cheese Curds – Culver’s
Chili – Wendy’s
Mac and Cheese – Chick-fil-A
Tots – Sonic Drive-In
Onion Rings – Jack in the Box
Fried Pickles – Zaxby’s
Mozzarella Sticks – Arby’s
Tempura Green Beans – The Habit Burger Grill
Cajun Fried Corn - Wingstop
Fried Pickles have another story which I’ll talk about later.
Randall Munroe’s xkcd webcomic for March 1, 2024, shown above, is titled Geographic Qualifiers. If you don’t have a superlative for the world, then you can just pick someplace smaller. There is a discussion at Explain xkcd.
For example, the 550-foot High Roller in Las Vegas is the tallest operating Ferris Wheel in the world. But the 175-foot Seattle Great Wheel is the tallest in the Pacific Northwest.
You also can dial back on other qualifiers. There is Honest John’s Used Cars. But here in Boise we instead have Fairly Reliable Bob’s.
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