Confusing terminology for time with that for distance

At her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog  on February 25, 2020 Jane Genova had a post titled Like Michael Bloomberg, anyone can be nailed to cross for language/behavior light years ago. Her first two sentences were:

“It’s not only dysfunctional relatives who keep bringing up what allegedly or really did happen light years ago. What we’re witnessing is that in politics there is no statute of limitations on what others claim had been said/done decades ago.”

But whatever Mr. Bloomberg did was on this planet, not in a galaxy far, far away. A light-year is an astronomical unit for distance, not for time. She should have said decades both times – in the title and text. It only takes a minute to check and not be guilty of bad writing.   

Was that really a million or a billion?

Yesterday at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova posted briefly about The $300 print textbook – the end is near. Her second paragraph about a publisher began by claiming:

“Since 2013, Pearson’s revenues had declined from $2 billion to $1.3 million.”

That would be a catastrophic drop of more than 99.9%. Clearly $1.3 million just is a typo, and she should have said $1.3 billion. Careful proofreading would have caught it. (The M key is just two spaces to the right of the B key).

That article by Eric Johnson in recode on August 2, 2019 titled “The $300 textbook is dead,” says the CEO of textbook maker Pearson which Jane linked to discussed a drop to $1.3 billion, a 35% decrease.

The article also mentioned annual sales of both 10 million and 100 million books. If we assume that an average book sold for $100, than sales of 10 million would multiply to a revenue of $1 billion, so the former sales number likely is correct.

A carless quotation

Using a quotation can be a powerful way to open a blog post or a speech. But not if you fail (receive an F) by getting both the spelling and wording wrong. On  July 6, 2019 Jane Genova opened a blog post titled “God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own…” The Alleged Curse of Privilege as follows:

“ ‘They are carless people.’ That’s how a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book ‘The Great Gatsby’ sized up the privileged. The book was fiction – a novel.”  

Of course she meant to say careless rather than carless. But the wording also is wrong. The phrase ‘careless people’ only appeared twice in that novel. First Jordan Baker says: “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.” Second is probably what she meant: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….”

There are better quotes about privilege. In his 2013 novel, Transatlantic, Colum McCann said:

“They inherited it all. The curse of privilege. Janitors for the ambitions of the dead.”  

If you are carless, then you have to hitchhike, as shown above. The Australian road sign came from Wikimedia Commons.

Don’t just tell us that something happened – tell us what we can do about it

On May 29, 2019 at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova posted about Fortune Setting Up Paywall – Risky Business. She linked to a Wall Street Journal article from that same day titled Fortune to add paywall in bid to diversify revenue stream, and also to her January 28, 2019 article at O’Dwyers titled Paywalls: the high stakes.

Those of us who sometimes read articles from that ninety year old business magazine are more interested in what we can do about that paywall – like perhaps being able to leap right over it (as is shown above).  For now we can, since local public libraries (like those here in Idaho) carry Fortune in the Business Source Premier database at EBSCOhost. There are nine articles posted on June 1, 2019 from the latest Fortune 500 List. I previously discussed using libraries in a May 12, 2018 post titled A door past the Vanity Fair magazine paywall, and on December 23, 2017 in another post titled How to build a bad presentation – describe a problem but not a good solution.

Jane still is a poster girl for superficial research and thoughtless writing.

The image was adapted from one in The Comic History of Rome showing Remus jumping over the Walls found at Wikimedia Commons.

Steve Jobs was not a psychic

A few times a week I look at the Speaking Pro Central web site to look at their list of about three dozen trending articles. But when I do about half are silly ones from Jane Genova that aren't related to public speaking.  

On April 28, 2019 at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova posted with the title Steve Jobs – Was he psychic & did that help with product development? On April 27, 2019 she had posted with the title “Small Fry” – How it was growing up Steve Jobs’ Illegitimate Daughter about a 2018 book written by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. In the April 28 post she speculated that Jobs must have been psychic - since had told his daughter both that someday he would be famous, and that he would die young. That speculation merely is wishful thinking based on hilariously shallow research. That book said something more specific and different about him dying. Lisa’s mother reportedly said:

“When they were dating in high school, even before they started selling the blue boxes that let you call anywhere in the world for free, he predicted that he would become famous. ‘How did he know?’ ‘He just did,’ she said. ‘He also said he’d die young, in his early forties.’ I was pretty sure that since the first prediction was right, the second one would be right too. I began to think of him as a kind of prophet, with loneliness and tragedy at the edges.”

And Lisa also reported:

“ ‘I’m going to die in my early forties,’ my father said to me around this time. He’d come to pick me up at a friend’s house for the first time. His delivery was dramatic, as if to stir some action, but there was no action I could see to take. Forty seemed pretty old from my vantage point of eight.”

If Jobs really was a psychic, then his prediction would have been correct, and he would actually have died in his early forties. A few seconds checking of  the Wikipedia article about him reveals that instead he lived over a decade longer to age 56 - dying from pancreatic cancer.

An October 11, 2011 article in Rolling Stone by Jeff Goodell titled The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew reported:

“ ‘Steve always had that James Dean, live-fast, die-young thing,’ says Steve Capps, one of the key programmers on the first Apple Macintosh. As they worked late into the night to design and build the device that would revolutionize personal computing, Jobs would talk about death a lot. ‘It was a little morbid,’ Capps recalls. ‘He’d say, ‘I don’t want to be 50.'  Brennan recalls Jobs making similar comments when he was only 17. ‘Steve always believed he was going to die young,’ Brennan says. ‘I think that’s part of what gave his life such urgency. He never expected to live past 45.’ ”

The Wikipedia article refers to the official biography by Walter Isaacson which indicates he consulted a psychic:

“To the horror of his friends and wife, Jobs decided not to have surgery to remove the tumor, which was the only accepted medical approach. “I really didn’t want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,” he told me years later with a hint of regret. Specifically, he kept to a strict vegan diet, with large quantities of fresh carrot and fruit juices. To that regimen he added acupuncture, a variety of herbal remedies, and occasionally a few other treatments he found on the Internet or by consulting people around the country, including a psychic.”

How did Jane miss the details? She was way too busy cranking out three blog posts on the 27th and four on the 28th to do a careful job on Jobs.

An image of Felix the Cat came from Wikimedia Commons.   

Phil Plait’s TEDx talk about how science learns by making mistakes…and admitting them

On March 19, 2019 at his Bad Astronomy blog Phil Plait posted about My TED talk: Science learns by making mistakes…and admitting them. A revised version of his TEDx talk titled The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes posted at the main TED web site. On July 12, 2018 I had blogged about the previous version in a post titled Failing upwards.

Phil’s blog post mentions that his back had been bothering him, so he took a pain medication which had the unfortunate side effect of giving him a dry mouth.

Some otherwise intelligent people don’t understand that science isn’t just ‘facts.’ For a recent example see Jane Genova’s March 23, 2019 silly blog post titled Facts – smirk.

Going up the wrong street

Yesterday Jane Genova blogged about Brick & Mortar Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh, PA) in play. She showed an image of the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Murray Avenue. (I grew up in Squirrel Hill, and lived within five blocks of that intersection for over two decades. On October 15, 2018 I blogged about going back for My fiftieth high school reunion). Then Jane whined that:

“Shopping, dining and people-watching were brisk on the main drag – Forbes. In this era of the crash of brick and mortar retail, Forbes seems just fine.

But I didn’t decide to stop driving. There was no parking, except in pay-for-a-spot multi-level structures and on-the-street. Those spots not tagged for payment frequently were categorized as only-for-an-hour.

So, the merchants on Forbes lost my business.”   

Had she done some research (asked a local), they would have told her she was ‘a bissel meshuggeneh’ and simply looking down the wrong street. Only a block or so of Forbes Avenue – from Murray Avenue to a little past Shady Avenue is filled with shopping. But Murray Avenue really is the ‘main drag.’ If Jane just had turned right at the intersection she would have found about eight blocks of shopping - and some parking lots. Google the phrase ‘Mineo’s Pizza House’ with the address of ‘2128 Murray Avenue’ and then look at the map.  

Also, back on March 8, 2017 I blogged about how ‘In play’ is a stale old phrase from sports. Instead try something else like ‘up for grabs.’

Proofread both the text and title of your speech or article

On December 2, 2018 Jane Genova posted an article titled Another high achiever commits suicide – Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, 58. She claimed:

“As the Daily Mail reports, Stearney was 58 yeas (sic) old. At the time he was overseeing naval operations in the Middle East as well as being a husband and father. He had joined the navy when he was 58.”

But according to the Daily Mail Stearney actually joined the navy back in 1982 – when he was around 22. Jane’s fascination with suicide is macabre.

On November 25, 2018 Jane posted another article with a mangled title - “FBI” – Will This New Dick Wolf Series Be Renew or Cancel? That title should have been something more like Will ‘FBI’, the new TV crime show from Dick Wolf, be renewed or canceled? Jane linked to an article at TV Series Finale that tabulated ratings for the first eight episodes. Then she whined that the relationships within the FBI unit had not gelled, and her vote would be to cancel. But she never looked further to ask why that happened.

According to  the Merriam-Webster dictionary a showrunner is:

“a person who oversees the writing and production of each episode of a television series and has ultimate managerial and creative control over the series.”

An article by Joe Otterson in Variety on October 10, 2018 titled Dick Wolf’s ‘FBI’ changes showrunners for second time described how the series had switched from Craig Turk, to Greg Plageman, and then to the tag team of Rick Eid and Derek Haas.

Jane had changed her mind. Earlier on October 31, 2018 she wrote another article titled Dick Wolf’s ‘FBI’ getting its footing that said her hunch was that ‘FBI’ will have a second season.

UPDATE

On December 9 th Jane posted another incorrectly titled article titled It Goes All the Way Back to Cain and Able (sic).

Jousting with typos

If you don’t proofread, (and perhaps left Auto Correct on) hilarious typos can slip through. Today at her Jane Genova Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog she posted about Government’s Role in Deterring All Alcohol Consumption – Coming Regulatory, Business, Cultural Earthquake. She indirectly referred to an article that actually had appeared in The Lancet medical magazine which was titled Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990 -2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of disease Study 2016. In the first sentence of her first paragraph she claimed:

“The study just published in the influential Lancet Medical Journal is calling upon governments around the world to deter all consumption of a brisk seller in many economies.”

But in the first sentence of her eleventh paragraph the magazine had changed to instead become about one of King Arthur’s knights:

“The research published in the Lancelot Medical Journal is based on reviewing about 1,000 studies.”

She also reposted that article both at her Law and More blog and at her Aging On Your Terms – The Coach blog.

The image of jousting was cropped from here at Wikimedia Commons.

A statistic about retirees that leaves women out

For the past couple of months at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova has been repeating a claim (as in one of her June 22nd posts) that:

“…the Federal Reserve Board found that one-third of retirees bounce back into the workforce. There’s even a term coined for that: reverse retirement.”

She also repeated it on page 9 of her ebook, Outwitting Ageism to Land, Hold, and Move on to Better Work. But she didn’t link to an article from the Federal Reserve Board, and perhaps never ever even bothered to read it. Instead she just linked to another article about it at New Retirement from October 17, 2017 titled Reverse Retirement: find out why so many retirees are going back to work. The original 2016 article by Lindsay Jacobs and Suphanit Piyapromdee is titled Labor Force Transitions at Older Ages: Burnout, Recovery, and Reverse Retirement and it is Finance and Discussion Series 2016-053. The very first sentence says:

“Over one-third of men who identify themselves as retired later re-enter the labor force.”  

Are men meant in the narrow sense (males) or the broader sense (females and males)? When we look at Section 3 we find it says the former:

“The data we use come from the Health and Retirement Study panel of men and women in the U.S. age 50 and older. There are 10 biennial waves available, with the survey years beginning in 1992 with the most recent available being from 2010. We include males from the HRS Cohort, born 1931-1941 who were observed for at least five waves and worked during at least one. This gives us a total of 3,241 respondents.”

So women (over half of the population) weren’t even included, and the only data after the Great Recession are from 2008 and 2010! On August 7th Jane had whined about the one-third fraction that:  

“I find that a low number for retirees returning to work. I have a hunch the percentage is higher.”

Why were women left out? There are significant gender effects that would complicate model building. Data for married men and women are shown above, taken from another more recent publication - Nicole Maestas’s Working Paper #24449 (March 2018) from the National Bureau of Economic Research titled The Return to Work and Women’s Employment Decisions. (For simplicity I have just compared one set of data). At age 55 70% of men were working, compared with just less than 50% of women.    

For us men, the detailed data from the Federal Reserve Board still are very interesting, and graphics do a much better job of explanation than mere words. Figure 1 shows the fraction of men working full or part time versus age. At 56 80% are working full time, at 62 50% are, and at 68 just 20% are.  

The bottom graph from Figure 2 shows the percentages making transitions from not working to either working part-time or full-time. While Table 1 had said that the percent ever reverse retiring was 35.5%, the graph shows there is a large drop off as age increases.  

Every couple of days I take a look at Speaking Pro Central, which has articles about public speaking, PowerPoint, etc. Today Jane has one of the eight Trending Articles shown, but 24 of the 29 More Trending articles. She cranks out so much stuff it’s hardly surprising that much of it is not carefully researched. Caveat emptor!   

The ‘retired’ version of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.

Do the benefits of public speaking training outweigh their costs in money and time?

On July 15, 2018 there was an article by Mr. Coen Tan at the Asia Professional Speakers Singapore web site titled Is public speaking training a waste of time and money? (His answer is no). He wrote it in response to an article at Forbes that he did not fully identify or link to, but was by Kristi Hedges back on April 19, 2012. It was titled Confessions of a former public speaking trainer: don’t waste your money. I blogged about it back on April 23, 2012 in a post titled Does the cost for public speaking training outweigh the benefits?

Mr. Tan’s article has five sections titled:

1] Starting out in public speaking

2] Invest in sharpening your speaking skills

3] Body language is over-rated

4] Develop your authentic style

5] Drop the show!  

In the first section he said that: “If you want to get started and overcome your fear of public speaking, join a platform like Toastmasters.” But Mr. Tan did a lot more than join – he stayed until he received the highest award, Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).   

In the second section Mr. Tan said he invested tens of thousands of dollars to learn from top speakers, kept what worked, and discarded what didn’t. (A Singapore dollar is 0.73 of a U.S. dollar, so that’s still a lot of money). He also said he learned NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), of which I am very skeptical, and mentioned Andy Harrington, who I thought gave silly advice on eye contact.  

Do the benefits of public speaking training outweigh their costs? My answer is sometimes. There are different types of training, and costs involve both money and time. Before you buy you need to obey the railway warning sign shown above – to stop, look, and listen.

Toastmasters costs relatively little money, but calls for lots of time. Conversely coaching by a professional takes relatively little time, but calls for lots of money. If you need help to give an important speech in less than a month, Toastmasters wouldn’t be a good idea and coaching would be. But what Jane Genova did was to try Toastmasters, as I blogged about in a June 19, 2016 post titled Running away from Toastmasters.      

The railway warning sign came from Darren Glanville at Wikimedia Commons.

Don’t just carp about networking

Today on her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova superficially posted about Networking – so many victims of bad career advice. She began by whining:

“In good career times and bad career times, the supposed experts tell professionals to network. That simplistic advice is often useless. It can be counterproductive – positioning and packaging the eager networkers as pests or worse.

….Until parties have something to trade, they better not approach the network.

….Takeaway: Beware of off-the-shelf career advice. Each professional’s situation is unique.”

That’s just carping – complaining about what is wrong without suggesting a useful alternative. For almost two decades the pay-it-forward alternative to networking has been netweaving. I blogged about it in a December 28, 2014 post titled Netweaving versus just networking.

Brad Gruber also had an article at LinkedIn Pulse on April 22, 2016 titled Move over traditional networking – make way for netweaving.

Is that an encore career, or are you instead just downshifting?

Sometimes ‘experts’ (with a small e) do such superficial research they don’t even get the established jargon right. On June 18, 2018 at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova posted about Encore careers – leaving only the rat race, continuing to work. She clearly was confused about what the phrase ‘encore career’ means (more than just continued work), and hadn’t even checked the Wikipedia page. The FAQ page at Encore.org says:

“An ‘encore’ or ‘encore career’ is continued work in the second half of life that combines social impact, purpose, and often, continued income. While many people see their encore work as a ‘career,’ others associate the career language with the ‘achieving’ stage of life. For that reason, we talk about an encore role, work, or activity – or simply ‘an encore.’ Use whichever language feels most comfortable to you.”

An older term, downshifting, is what she should have used. That term is the title of a 2001 book by John D. Drake - Downshifting: how to work less and enjoy life more. A similar phrase down-shifting was in the title of a 1992 book by Amy Saltzman - Down-shifting: reinventing success on a slower track. I read one of them so long ago I no longer remember which it was.

For better advice than Jane’s superficial drivel, go to the real experts on retirement at AARP. There is an article in the AARP bulletin by Sally Abrahams titled Ready for your second career?

The gearshift image of a FIAT 500L came from Wikimedia Commons.  

Update June 25, 2018

On June 22nd The New York Times had an opinion article by Alissa Quart titled The Snake Oil of the Second-Act Industry, which cautioned that there are expensive programs out there whose goal is to separate you from your remaining money.  

How much on average does it cost per month to run a household, if you are retired and over 65?

I don’t know, and couldn’t easily find good statistics - which I showed above as two unknowns X and Y. But I easily found the answer to another question - how much does it cost to run a household if you just are 65 or older? There was an article by Dayana Yochim on May 31, 2018 at USA Today mistitled Let’s get real about planning: what an average retirement costs. (It had originally appeared at NerdWallet on May 28th). Also, it was reprinted at MarketWatch on June 5th, where Jane Genova found it and used it in a post at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog titled Households heading into retirement – be prepared to spend average of $3800 monthly. That NerdWallet article actually said:

“According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which is based on 2016 figures, ‘older households’ - defined as those run by someone 65 and older - spend an average of $45,756 per year, or roughly $3,800 a month.”

But not everyone older than 65 is retired. On June 20, 2016 there was another article by Drew DeSilver at the Pew Research Center titled More older Americans are working, and working more, than they used to. It reported:

“In May, 18.8% of Americans ages 65 and older, or nearly 9 million people, reported being employed full – or part-time, continuing a steady increase that dates to at least 2000 (which is as far back as we took our analysis).”

In 2000 only 12.5% were employed, and the increase to 18.8% was roughly a straight line. The other 81.2% were retired. When you are researching statistics for writing a speech or a blog post it often is useful to make a simple drawing (or perhaps a Venn diagram) to illustrate which numbers really are of interest and how they are connected.

Would you expect older adults who are working to have less or more expenses than those who are retired? I don’t know. Perhaps they are continuing to work because they need to since they haven’t saved enough to retire comfortably. That might mean they have less expenses to match a lower income. Or they could be Type A personalities – outgoing, ambitious, rigidly organized, highly status-conscious, impatient, and simply unable to let go of a job that has come to define them. That might mean they have more expenses.      

‘Et al.’ is a pedantic Latin phrase that doesn’t ever belong in the title of a blog post or a speech

‘Et al’ just is Latin jargon that doesn’t belong in the title of a blog post or a speech. It merely means ‘and others.’ That phrase belongs in a list of references at the end of a scholarly magazine article – where an article has more than three authors, so listing them all would be clumsy.  

But in posts at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova has used it seven times just this year. They were:

May 27, 2018:  The psychotherapy brand – David W. Harder, et al.

May 2, 2018:  Kathleen Huebner, et al. – No, I do not wish you well

April 17, 2018:  The law, according to Jones Day, et al.

April 13, 2018:  Tronc layoff – Why writers, et al., have such tough time exiting comfort zone

March 28, 2018:  Thanh Cong Phan, et al. – perhaps they just wanted to be a “somebody”

February 27, 2018:  Alexa, et al. – voice tech eliminating traditional brands, consumer choice

February 3, 2018:  Unlike iGen, our tribe HAD TO meet up in-person – Charlotte Toal, M. Lynn Rickert, et al.

Every week I look at Speaking Pro Central, so I saw her latest post with it on their list of Trending Articles. It’s practically a tidal wave of pomposity!
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A door past the Vanity Fair magazine paywall

On May 9, 2018 Jane Genova blogged about Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair – Can It Survive a Paywall? She linked to an article from April 27, 2018 at What’s New in Publishing titled Vanity Fair launches digital paywall as part of wider Conde Nast strategy.

Jane ignorantly claimed:

“Frugal readers still determined to have a free ride can scan the Vanity Fair's headlines, then find similar content with a similar tone somewhere on the internet.” 

But that’s not necessary. A frugal reader will get out his library card, type the number into the login box for databases at his friendly local public library, and read (or download .pdf files) of articles in databases such as MasterFILE Premier from EBSCOhost. I discussed this in a blog post on December 27, 2017 titled How to build a bad presentation –describe a problem but not a good solution.

The image about being ignorant was adapted from one from 1938 by the Federal Art Project at the Library of Congress.

The American car isn’t dead yet

On April 26, 2018 Jane Genova blogged about the claimed Death of the American Car. She had seen an article by Robert Ferris at CNBC on that day titled Ford is basically giving up on US car business, and GM is not far behind. Based on superficial research Jane whined:

“It was obvious way before Ford and GM made their recent announcements about cutting back car production. Anyone could just look around the parking lots of even lower middle class apartment complexes. There would be no cars. Instead there were – and are – pickups, SUVs, and cross-overs. Yes, the American car had died. No one seemed to care.”

But if Jane had looked further she would have seen a very different picture. For example, at Bloomberg on January 16, 2018 there was an article titled The American sedan is dying. Long live the SUV which was subtitled Detroit executives are killing off their slow-selling cars in favor of SUVs. That article has a graph comparing actual and projected annual US vehicle sales for cars and trucks. In 2012 the mix was even at 50% trucks - 50% cars. In 2016 it had shifted to 60% trucks – 40% cars. In 2020 it would be 65% trucks – 35% cars. That article also said:

“American auto executives might be happy to see passenger cars go. For decades, they’ve struggled to make money selling sedans while raking in profits from SUVs and trucks.

…. Asian automakers that have come to dominate U.S. sedan segments over the last three decades aren’t going anywhere. The Toyota Camry remained the top-selling car in America last year, though it was outsold by the RAV4 crossover for the first time. Toyota recently revamped the Camry and debuted a redesigned Avalon sedan in Detroit, while Honda Motor Co. kicked off the show by accepting the North American Car of the Year award for its revamped Accord. Nissan Motor Co. is expected to roll out a refreshed Altima sedan soon.”

Another article at Automotive News on October 1, 2017 titled U.S. auto production undergoes a decade of transformation showed the percent share of North American light-vehicle production by automaker. For the first 8 months of 2017 three Japanese automakers contributed a total of 32.7% (almost a third): Toyota 11.5%, Honda 10.7%, and Nissan 10.5%. (Hyundai-Kia was 5.4% and VW Group was 3.5%). And a press release from Honda on March 6, 2018 said Honda builds its 25 millionth automobile in the U.S. (They started in Marysville, Ohio ~175 miles from Jane’s Youngstown location).

Jane continued about her childhood in Jersey City:

“….In a sense this era of The Big Vehicle returns us Baby Boomers to our youth. Back then there were no small cars. My father’s first was a boxy Buick. The whole extended family fit in. Eventually he and his fellow Italian immigrant buddies landed good enough jobs to move on up to the Cadillac. That, not the purchase of a single-family house, was their version of the American dream.”

I’m a Baby Boomer, and grew up in Pittsburgh. I do remember small cars like the Nash Rambler, which was the subject of the 1958 Beep Beep song by the Playmates. But the smallest, cheapest car was the two-seat King Midget – a microcar from Athens, Ohio featured in tiny ads in the back of Popular Mechanics magazine (and an article in the 1954 issue). Look at the March 12, 2016 article in USA Today titled Just Cool Cars: This 1954 King Midget was fit for a pauper.

Also Jane only got 2/5ths of the divisional marketing strategy cooked up for General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan back in the 1920s. An excerpt from the David Evans book Management Gurus says those divisions were (in order of increasing price): Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac. Oldsmobile was closed in 2004, and Pontiac in 2010.   

UPDATE May 1, 2018

On April 30, 2018 Jane Genova had another superficially researched blog post about how SUVs – Disaster. She noted that gas prices are ‘surging’ and referred to an AP article titled Get ready for the most expensive driving season in years which noted they had risen from $2.39 a year ago to $2.81 yesterday (although she mistakenly also said $2.81 for a year ago). Then she claimed:

“If the trend continues, Americans will find their commute to work increasingly expensive. The moment of truth could come: they will have to trade in their SUV for a, well, car. Otherwise they can’t afford to get to work, not any more. And my fuel-efficient sedan will be worth a king’s ransom. In fact, what could occur is that cars become the hot vehicle to steal.”

    

No, Jane, your sedan won’t be worth a king’s ransom. There were lots of other sedans sold in the U.S. in 2017 made by Toyota, Honda and Nissan. For Toyota there were 387,081 Camrys and 308,695 Corolla/Matrix. For Honda there were 322,655 Accords and 377,286 Civics. For Nissan there were 218,451 Sentras and 254,996 Altimas. Add those up and you get 1,869,164 cars. And, if you also include the 209,623 Ford Fusion and 158,385 Ford Focus you get 2,237,172 cars.