Dick Van Dyke told his hardest story from a 75-year career

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on December 13, 2025. And he published a book with a series of stories titled 100 Rules for Living to 100: An optimist’s guide to a happy life. An article by Sarah Lemire at Today on November 18, 2025 is titled EXCLUSIVE: At Almost 100, Dick Van Dyke Won’t Sit Still – and Is Eyeing 1 More Big Role. She notes that he had a 75-year career. There is another article by Liz McNeil in People magazine on November 25, 2025 titled Dick Van Dyke ‘Feels Pretty Good for 100.’ Here’s Why He’s Optimistic About His Centennial Birthday (Exclusive).

 

 On pages 105 to 113 there is a great story, titled Tell Your Hardest Story:

 

“In December 1973, I found a seat in a circle of chairs in a grim, fluorescent-lit meeting room at the Brentwood Veterans’ Hospital. Around me were military vets, young and old, all hospitalized for drug and alcohol addiction and gathered for regular group therapy. I was there as a visitor, doing research for my role as an alcoholic in The Morning After, a TV movie being shot elsewhere in the facility.

 

It was weird for these guys to have a Hollywood actor eavesdropping on their raw, real-life stories of struggle, I could tell. Right off the bat, I needed to assure them that I would be a sympathetic listener. ‘The subject of my movie is very personal to me,’ I began, ‘because I myself am an alcoholic.’

 

Their faces flickered with surprise. At the time, only my family and a handful of other people in my life knew about my drinking problem.

 

‘So, I understand some of what you’re going through. But really, I’m here to listen and learn.”

 

Then Dick decided to go public.

 

“The story got picked up across the country. As expected, when Mr. Goody Two-shoes admitted his addiction to the world, the public was shocked. Friends and colleagues from wherever I’d lived and worked called to offer sympathy and encouragement, reporting that they, and everyone they knew could barely believe the news. Within a week, I was getting letters by the thousand – people were moved and incredibly understanding. Many detailing how alcoholism had impacted them and their loved ones.

 

That reaction spurred me to go even more public. I appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and I told my story onstage in Washington, DC, for a press conference with other celebrity alcoholics. I am told that rehab facilities still show The Morning After to this day.

 

…. Each time I put a new layer of it into words, I feel a release of the power that alcoholism had over me. I was separating myself from the disease, seeing my experience as a battle with the disease. Telling my story was giving me power and freedom.

 

Each of us has our own hard stories of crisis and struggle. When we hold them in, out of fear or shame, they control us. But when we tell our stories, we’re in the driver’s seat. And when we share those stories, even just among our friends and family, we are literally helping one another to survive, just like that brotherhood of vets.”  

 

Pages 9 and 10 have a story titled Make Your Own Rules. On page 10 Dick has the following weasel words about his rules and stories:

 

“I readily admit that you might find variations of the same rule emerging in multiple stories here. That’s because my life, like everyone else’s, has its personality-specific ongoing themes – questions that pop up, over and over again, in different contexts, old challenges that look different in each new light, wisdom learned and forgotten and learned again.

 

I might also add that, for some of these stories, there’s not exactly a rule or even a specific question. Sometimes that’s because I know there’s some nugget of meaning in the story, but I haven’t figured out what it is. Maybe you can! Other times, it’s just a funny story, plain and simple. Because don’t we all sometimes just need comic relief?

 

Finally, if you’re inclined to count up these rules to see if there are exactly one hundred, as advertised in the title, your math might disappoint you, just a little. Quality over quantity, as the saying goes, right? I can assure you that this book will deliver enough main rules, sub-rules, ancillary rules, and multipart rules to last you a lifetime, yes, all the way to one hundred!”    

 

His book doesn’t bother to number those stories or even give us a Table of Contents. I got suspicious about whether there really were a hundred, and then wrote down the following list of all the story titles (grouped ten at a time):  

 

Don’t Act Your Age

Make Your Own Rules

Examine Your Head

Learn to Fall

Find Your Passion in Your Past

Tolerate and Cherish Your Little Brother

Face Your Fear

Find “The New You” Inside “The Old You”

Find Your People – A Story in Several Parts

Figure Out Who You Aren’t

 

Don’t Litter: Tips for Safety and Hygiene on Family Road Trips in the 1950s

Don’t Count on “The Big Break”

Hone Your Bit (Every Job Is Training for the Next One)

Don’t Do Live Morning TV

Some Secrets You Shouldn’t Tell

Eggs Again? Some Failures Are Just That

Dance with Chita

Go Nuts (But Maybe Not That Nuts)

Suck Up to the Landlady

Speak Up for Your Family

 

It Doesn’t Take a Good Boss to Do Great Work

Accept Your Limitations

Win an Oscar

Stay on the Phone

Make Christmas with What You’ve Got

Don’t Trust Machines

Reconsider the Boogeyman

Tell Your Hardest Stories

Play Against Type

Retire on Your Own Terms

 

Remain Anonymous

Start a Band

Commit to Play

Save All That Artwork

Believe in Fate

Take Your Doubts to the Desert

Accept “Rescue” with Grace

See the Pattern to Get Past It

Help Someone Find Their Voice: Do’s and Don’ts

Reimagine Your Legacy

 

Read the Fine Print

Learn from Animals: 3 Species, 4 Rules

Get a Good DJ

Write It Down

Bond Through Crisis

Be Someone’s Baker

Get Frank: A Meditation on Old Rifts

Remember the Good Stuff, Leave the Rest Behind

Reminisce While You Can

Get a Great Sidekick

 

Clear the Air

Get a Second Opinion (and a Third and a Fourth…)

Learn from Teaching

Cross Off Regrets

Learn from Shame

Never Call “Cut”

Don’t Match Jimmy

Don’t Live in the Past

It Pays to Go to the Gym

Build a Slide and Grandkids Will Come

 

Transmogrify Halloween (On Family Traditions)

The Clothes Make the Gnome

Stay Tall Inside

Hand Over the Keys

Read While You Can

Do Get All Judgy (When You’re Watching TV)

Learn a New Way to Fall

Carpe Chita

Remember Honestly

Live with Regrets

 

Your Purpose Doesn’t Need to be Grand

You Will Not Be Alone

Save the Afterlife for After Life

You Can’t Protect Your Survivors

Find Your Arlene

 

As you can see, there are just seventy-five. The book could have more honestly been titled Seventy-Five Rules from My 75-Year Career: An optimist’s guide to a happy life.

 

The wreath was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.  

 

There are strategies for crisis communication that executives should master

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful and brief article at Speakeasy on August 1, 2025 that is titled Crisis Communication Strategies Every Executive Should Master. Their nine strategies are to:

 

1]  Stay Centered and Project Calm

2]  Communicate Early and Often

3]  Be Human and Empathetic

4]  Deliver a Clear, Unified Message

5]  Prepare Spokespeople Across the Leadership Team

6]  Address Internal and External Audiences Separately

7]  Build and Practice Your Plan Before a Crisis Hits

8]  Strengthen Public Speaking Confidence

9]  Listen as Part of the Strategy

 

 

An article busting ten myths about charismatic speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 29, 2025 I blogged about What makes a speaker charismatic? There is a long, detailed 31-page pdf article by Jan Michalsky and Oliver Niebuhr at Acta Universitasis Carolinae in 2019 which is titled Myth Busted? Challenging What We Think We Know About Charismatic Speech. It has over a hundred references! That article discusses the following ten myths:

 

Myth 1: Charisma makes a difference.

 

Myth 2: Charisma is a divine talent of a few gifted people that only surfaces during a crisis.

 

Myth 3: Charismatic communication is the expression of a charismatic personality.

 

Myth 4: How we say something is more important than what we say.

 

Myth 5: Lower voices are more charismatic.

 

Myth 6: A clear pronunciation supports perceived speaker charisma.

 

Myth 7: Filled pauses are bad for perceived charisma.

 

Myth 8: Belly breathing and an upright posture support speaker charisma.

 

Myth 9: A charismatic performance requires intensive training on the part of the speaker.

 

Myth 10: Engineers are less charismatic.

 

My image was assembled by repeating and modifying one of a carved figure at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, British Columbia.

 

 

Factfulness is a wonderful book regarding how to think about the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hans Rosling (1948 to 2017) was a Swedish physician. He gave a TED talk in 2014 with his son Ola on How not to be ignorant about the world. There is another 2007 TED talk titled The best stats you’ve ever seen | Hans Rosling.

 

There also is a wonderful 2018 book by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. It has a Wikipedia page too. They discuss ten instincts which can distort our perspective. In March 27, 2025 I blogged about one chapter in a post titled There may be no warning before as disaster.

 

 There are eleven chapters in the book, ten of which end with as summary as follows:

 

“Chapter 1 [page 46]: To control the gap instinct, look for the majority.

 

Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.

Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.

The view from up here. Remember, looking down from above distorts the view. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not.

 

 

Chapter 2 [page 74]: To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news.

 

Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g. better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.

Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.

More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.

Beware rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories,

 

 

Chapter 3 [page 100]: To control the straight line instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes. [See the image shown above].

 

Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines, but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to.

 

 

Chapter 4 [page 123]: To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks.

 

The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected – by your own attention filters or by the media – precisely because it is scary.

Risk = danger x exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it.

Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

 

 

Chapter 5 [page 143]: To control the size instinct, get things in proportion.

 

Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.

80/20. Have you been given a long list> Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.

Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions.

 

 

Chapter 6 [page 165]: To control the generalization instinct, question your categories.

 

Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And…

Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also…

Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g. you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies to another (e.g. people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies.

Beware of ‘the majority.’ The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between

Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.

Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think. In what way is this a smart solution?

 

 

Chapter 7 [page 184]: To control the destiny instinct, remember slow change is still change.

 

Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.

Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.

Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.

Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s.

 

 

Chapter 8 [page 202]: To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer.

 

Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.

Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.

Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.

Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.

Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis.  

 

 

Chapter 9 [page 222]: To control the blame instinct, resist finding a scapegoat.

 

Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.

Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit.

 

 

Chapter 10 [page 242]: To control the urgency instinct, take small steps.

 

Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.

Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.

Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.

Be wary of drastic action. Ask what side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluations of their impact, are less dramatic, but usually more effective.”

 

The image of a chart on children came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

There may be no warning before a disaster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I was reading an excellent book from 2018 by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness, It is subtitled Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. The fourth chapter is titled The Fear Instinct, and it begins with an essay on pages 101 to 103 titled Blood All Over the Floor:

 

“On October 7, 1975 I was plastering a patient’s arm when an assistant nurse burst through the door and announced that a plane had crashed and the wounded were coming in by helicopter. It was my fifth day as a junior doctor on the emergency ward in the small coastal town of Hudiksvall in Sweden. All the senior staff were down in the dining hall and as the assistant nurse and I searched frantically for the folder of disaster instructions, I could already hear the helicopter landing. The two of us were going to have to handle this on our own.

 

Seconds later a stretcher was rolled in, bearing a man in dark green overalls and a camouflage life jacket. His arms and legs were twitching. An epileptic seizure, I thought; off with his clothes. I removed his life jacket easily but his overalls were more problematic. They looked like a spacesuit, with huge sturdy zippers all over, and no matter how I tried I couldn’t find the zipper that undid them. I had just registered that the uniform meant this was a military pilot when I noticed the blood all over the floor. ‘He’s bleeding,’ I shouted. With this much blood, I knew he could be dead in a matter of seconds, but with the overalls on, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I grabbed a big pair of plaster pliers [scissors] to cut through the fabric and howled to the assistant nurse, ‘Four bags of blood, O-negative, Now!’

 

To the patient, I shouted, ‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘Yazhe shisha… na adjezhizha zha …’ he replied. I couldn’t understand a word, but it sounded like Russian. I looked the man in his eyes and said with a clear voice, Bce Tnxo Tobapniii Wbenckaya Bojbhniia,’ which means ‘All is calm, comrade, Swedish hospital.’

 

I will never forget the look of panic I triggered with those words. Frightened out of his mind, he stared back at me and tried to tell me something: ‘Vavdvfor papratarjenji rysskamememje ej …’ I looked into his eyes full of fear, and then I realized: this must be a Russian fighter pilot who had been shot down over Swedish territory. Which means that the Soviet Union is attacking us. World War III has started! I was paralyzed by fear.

 

Fortunately, at that moment the head nurse, Birgitta, came back from lunch. She snatched the plaster pliers from my hand and hissed, ’Don’t shred it. That’s an air force ‘G suit’ and it costs more than 10,000 Swedish kronor.’ After a beat she added, ‘And can you please step off the life jacket. You’re standing on the color cartridge and it is making the whole floor red.’

 

Birgitta turned to the patient, calmly freed him from his G suit and wrapped him in a couple of blankets. In the meantime she told him in Swedish. ‘You were in the icy water for 23 minutes, which is why you are jerking and shivering, and why we can’t understand what you’re saying.’ The Swedish air force pilot, who had evidently crashed during a routine flight, gave me a comforting little smile.

 

A few years ago I contacted the pilot, and was relieved to hear that he doesn’t remember a thing from those first minutes in the emergency room in 1975. But for me the experience is hard to forget. I will forever remember my complete misjudgment. Everything was the other way around: the Russian was Swedish, the war was peace, the epileptic seizure was cooling, and the blood was a color ampule from inside the life jacket. Yet it had all seemed so convincing to me.

 

When we are afraid, we do not see clearly. I was a young doctor facing my first emergency, and I had always been terrified by the prospect of a third world war. As a child, I often had nightmares about it. I would wake up and run to my parents’ bed. I could be calmed only by my father going over the details of our plan one more time: we would take our tent in the bike trailer and go live in the woods where there were plenty of blueberries. Inexperienced, and in an emergency situation for the first time, my head quickly generated a worst-case scenario. I didn’t see what I wanted to see, I saw what I was afraid of seeing. Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”

  

We can avoid being dumbstruck from fear by first having a disaster exercise. I blogged about that topic back on September 11, 2012 in a post titled Disasters and triage.

 

As a Boy Scout back in the early 1960s I was part of one of the exercises in Pittsburgh called Prep Pitt. At the Civic Arena I was made up as a casualty with a compound fracture of my forearm. Modeling clay and protruding chicken bones were used. I was sent to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital.

 

And when I was in tech school to be an Air Force Reserve medic in 1972, we had a plane crash disaster exercise. Three years later, I was at Greater Pittsburgh airport when the crash phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. An Air National Guard tanker was going to land on a wet runway with two of its four engines shut down. While we waited beside the runway along with the fire trucks, I sat in the back of our ambulance and thought I’m ready for whatever happens. Fortunately they landed OK.   

 

Almost all Tesla Cybertrucks were recalled because trim rails might fall off

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Matt Ott at AP News on March 20, 2025 is titled In latest blow to Tesla, regulators recall nearly all Cybertrucks. Another article by Bryon Hurd at TheDrive on March 20, 2025 is titled Tesla recalls just about every Cybertruck as decorative steel falls off. An arrow in the above image points to the trim. Bryon said:

 

“Per the recall notice, the Cybertruck’s stainless steel cant rail trim (Easy to remember; it’s the part that can’t stay attached) may separate from the truck at speed, posing a hazard to other motorists.”

 

The NHTSA Part 573 Safety Recall Report on March 18, 2025 says 46,000 vehicles were affected and that:

 

“The Cybertruck is equipped with a cosmetic applique along the exterior of the vehicle, known as the cant rail, which is an assembly comprised of an electrocoated steel stamping joined to a stainless steel panel with structural adhesive. The cant rail assembly is affixed to the vehicle with fasteners. On affected vehicles, the cant rail stainless steel panel may delaminate at the adhesive joint, which may cause the panel to separate from the vehicle….

 

The remedy component uses a different structural adhesive not prone to environmental embrittlement to join the assembly, which is reinforced with a stud welded to the stainless panel with a nut clamping the steel panel to the vehicle structure.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, there are three possible failure paths – either in the adhesive or along one of the two interfaces. The remedy will depend on the exact path, which apparently was in the adhesive.

 

This sure isn’t rocket science!

 

Be sure to follow Hoot's Law in a crisis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been enjoying reading a 2023 book (I got from the Meridian Public Library) by Mike Massimino titled Moon Shot: A NASA astronaut’s guide to achieving the impossible. Chapter 5 is titled You Can Always Make It Worse, and it tells all about Hoot’s Law for dealing with a crisis. There is a brief discussion by Stephanie Vozza at Fast Company on December 7, 2023 in an article titled An astronaut shares his 30-second trick for boosting productivity.

 

Mike describes having trained for a space walk in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) which is a 200-foot long by 100-foot wide by 40-foot-deep pool. He got his safety tether hopelessly tangled up – between his legs, around his helmet, and around his tools. Finally, he asked Jim Newman, his spacewalk partner for help. Beginning on page 82 of the book (or here at Google Books), Mike says:

 

“In the battle of Mike vs. Tether, the tether had definitely won, and I spent the rest of the exercise kicking myself. Once we were out of the water, Jim took me aside and asked how my snarl got so bad. It was one of the worst he had ever seen. I told him it started out not so bad, but then I rushed, didn’t ask for help, and made it steadily worse and worse until I was totally trapped. Jim nodded and said, ‘Mike, you need to remember Hoot’s Law.’

 

‘What’s Hoot’s Law?’ I asked.

 

‘It’s something ‘Hoot’ Gibson used to say during his astronaut days: No matter how bad things may seem, you can always make it worse.’

 

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘Hoot Gibson was a wise astronaut.’

 

‘He was,’ Jim said. ‘There’s something else Hoot used to say that you might find helpful, too. ‘Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.’  

 

Hoot’s law was sound advice. When my first snarl occurred, it wasn’t that big of a problem. But with my rushing and panicking, I made it worse. It would have been better to slow down, take a minute, and appraise the situation before acting. In other words, it would have been better to do nothing until I figured out what had happened before I rushed to action. I could also have asked Jim or the control team to help me see where my safety tether was caught, since it was hard for me to do so myself. Hoot’s Law was one of the most important lessons I ever learned.

 

Robert ‘Hoot’ Gibson was a naval aviator and test pilot who’d been selected as an astronaut in 1978. His flying skills and leadership qualities were legendary. Everyone liked him. During my first selection board interview in 1994, he was still on staff, serving as chief of the Astronaut Office. During my interview, he sat not far from me, smiling the entire time. I’ll never forget that. At a time when I was nervous, he gave me this wonderful smile that seemed to say, ‘It’s okay, buddy. You’re doing great.’ It was a huge comfort to me at a very stressful time.

 

Hoot left NASA in November 1996, soon after my classmates and I showed up, but his mantras and advice continued to be passed on from generation to generation. One of the men who made sure those lessons got passed along was Charlie Bolden. In his long and legendary career, Charlie Bolden had served as a naval aviator, a test pilot, a NASA astronaut, a United States Marine Corps general, and the head of NASA from 2009 to 2017. Even with the talent to amass that kind of experience, Charlie Bolden had suffered his own embarrassing lesson in learning Hoot’s Law. For his first spaceflight in January 1986, Charlie was assigned to be the pilot of space shuttle Columbia. Hoot was his commander. During one of their early training runs, they were doing a shuttle launch simulation – a sim – with the rest of their crew. Charlie, being the rookie, wanted to show everyone how competent he was, just like I’d done with my tether in the pool. The second they lifted off, an alarm sounded due to an electrical failure. Charlie got out his checklist an determined they had an essential electrical bus failure that had taken down one of the shuttle’s three main engines. He told Hoot what the problem was and that he would take care of it. Charlie then ran the necessary procedure, which called for flipping a switch to shut down the failed part of the electrical system to take the bad electrical bus offline. So he reached over and flipped a switch – the wrong switch, taking down the wrong electrical bus.   

 

‘Suddenly.’ Charlie described to me, ‘it got really quiet in the simulator.’ They had already lost one engine from the first electrical failure. Charlie had now lost a second engine by taking an essential electrical source offline, which meant they were trying to get to space on one engine. Which is not possible. As the simulated gravity slowly overtook their simulated shuttle, they fell back down to the simulated Earth and crashed in the simulated ocean, dying their fiery, simulated deaths. Charlie just sat there as embarrassed as he could be, and that’s when Hoot Gibson looked over at him, put his hand on his left shoulder, and said, ‘Charles, have I ever taught you Hoot’s Law?’ “

 

Mike concludes the chapter:

 

“So, when you’re faced with what seems like a hopeless situation that can’t get any worse, remember: YOU can make it worse. Don’t let that happen, instead I suggest the following:

 

Remember Hoot’s Law. Think of how things could be worse if you make another mistake, and don’t create a second problem while hastily trying to solve the first problem.

 

Remember Joe LoPiccolo. Go slow and resist the temptation to act too quickly.

 

For critical corrective actions, if possible, get a second person to look over your shoulder to mke sure your action won’t lead to a worse situation.”

 

Charlie Bolden’s NASA oral history from 2004 has a slightly different statement of Hoot’s Law:

 “No matter how bad things get, you can always make them worse.”  

 

Right now there isn’t a Wikipedia page for Hoot’s Law, or a discussion of it on the page for Robert L. Gibson.

 

On December 20, 2019 I blogged about The joy of safety interlocks. In that post I referred to an article by John A. Palmer and David A. Danaher in EC&M on November 1, 2004 titled A series of preventable events leads to a power plant explosion. They describe how it began with a toilet line backup spewing sewage on control equipment. That led to hasty and botched repairs which defeated interlocks and allowed an explosive mixture of air and natural gas to develop – and over a half billion dollars of physical damage and lost revenue.   

 

The cartoon of an owl came from Openclipart.

 

Peloton recalled over two million exercise bikes to replace their seat posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you watch television, then you have encountered ads for the fancy Peloton PL01 exercise bicycle (shown above), which sells for $1445. An article at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on May 11, 2023 is titled Peloton recalls two million exercise bikes due to fall and injury hazards. A Peloton web page titled Peloton Original Bike Recall and Free Seat Post Repair explains:

 

“The original Peloton Bike seat post can break unexpectedly during use, creating a potential fall and injury risk. Peloton has identified 35 reports of seat posts breaking out of 2,160,000 units sold in the US. There have been 13 reports of injuries, including a wrist fracture, lacerations and bruises.”

 

Another article at DC Rainmaker on May 12, 2023 titled Peloton’s seatpost recall, Zwift’s curious steering rebirth, and GoPro price drop described the problem:

 

“The issue stems from the seat post, specifically the welds. There have been sporadic reports on Peloton Facebook and Reddit groups over the years of the seatpost snapping or separating during use.”

 

An arrow in the image shown above indicates the L-shaped seat post, which consists of two oval-shaped tubes connected by an elbow. The post can easily be replaced by the bicycle owner.

 

Yet another article at Reuters on May 11, 2023 titled Peloton recalls 2.2 million exercise bikes over seat issue describes the financial impact:

 

“During the January to March quarter, Peloton said it had accrued $8.4 million as an estimated expense related to ‘voluntary corrective action plan’ involving the defect.”

 

Still another article by Edward Segal at Forbes on May 16, 2023 is titled How product recalls can create a crisis for companies. This recall is a potential crisis because of the huge number of products, and parts which needed to be stockpiled before announcing it. There have been other CPSC recalls involving seat posts, like for Faraday electric bicycles on July 2, 2019 titled Electric bicycles recalled by Faraday; seat post poses fall hazard, But that recall involved just 4,450 bicycles – 485 times fewer than Peloton.

 

Failure analysis of a product typically involves an attempt to isolate the defect to a problem that occurred at a specific time period. Apparently due to the small number of broken seat posts Peloton was not able to localize a time, and had to recall all of them.

 

In early 2022 another problem with bicycles at Peloton was reported. An article by Patrick McGee at Ars Technica (from the Financial Times) on February 22, 2022 is titled Inside “Project Tinman”: Peloton’s plan to conceal rust in its exercise bikes, along with another by Lucas Nolan at Breitbart on February 23, 2022 titled ‘Project Tinman:’ How Peloton planned to conceal rust on its fancy exercise bikes.

 

The image of a Peloton bike came from Wikimedia Commons.    

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

"Prepare in advance

Pause and breathe

Express empathy and honesty

Acknowledge the uncertainty"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

"Point: State one main point

Reason: Provide a reason behind it

Example: Give an example that supports your point

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

 

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

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

What Would You Do (WWYD)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The September-October 2022 issue of Speaker magazine contains an interesting article by Traci Brown on pages 26 to 29 titled WWYD? (What Would You Do) and subtitled Things You Didn’t Know You Should Know Just in Case. It discusses the following situations:

 

Handling an audience emergency [seizure]

What if the situation is a little less dire? [noisy false fire alarm]

But what if it had been worse? [real threat like active shooter]

But what if it’s even worse than that? [9/11 attacks, etc.]

Like I was saying [hotel orders evacuation because of hurricane]

And then there are just some ideas so you’re smarter than the average bear

 

On November 6, 2019 I has blogged about previous articles in Toastmaster and Speaker magazines in a post titled Excellent advice on how to deal with a distraction or emergency during your speech.

 

An image of a gargoyle by Carol Highsmith at the Providence Children’s Museum came from the Library of Congress.

 

Donald Trump just sat around watching TV for three hours during the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday evening I watched the televised January 6th hearing. An article by Patricia Zengerle and Sarah N. Lynch at Reuters on July 22, 2022 titled Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot hearings lay blame at Trump’s feet reported:

 

" ‘President Trump sat at his dining table and watched the attack on television while his senior-most staff, closest advisors and family members begged him to do what is expected of any American president,’ U.S. Representative Elaine Luria said. ‘President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to stay in power.’ "

 

There also was a ludicrous moment described by Cody Godwin at USA Today on July 22, 2022 in another article titled Security cameras catch Sen. Josh Hawley running out of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots.

 

No photos were taken showing Trump in his dining room, so I Photoshopped one from a working lunch.   

 

Scaring people using ‘big’ numbers from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

 

After is not the same as because of

 

At Natural News on September 15, 2021 there is an article by Lance D. Johnson titled Approximately 70 people die from COVID vaccines every day in America – VAERS data. Is that claim true? No! Natural News is an unreliable source of anti-vaccine information, as was discussed by Melissa Goldin, John Gregory, and Kendrick McDonald at Newsweek on May 25, 2021 in an article titled How a well-meaning U.S. government database fuels dangerous vaccine misinformation. The VAERS web page titled Guide to Interpreting VAERS Data explains that:

 

“A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.”

 

And another article by David L. Katz at LinkedIn Pulse on July 13, 2021 titled COVID and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting: How VAERS veers off course adds:

 

“Even if a vaccine actually caused not a single death, VAERS would be loaded up with reports of death that occurred following vaccination, from a variety of causes. VAERS is designed to be inclusive, not exclusive; to be sensitive, not specific. VAERS is designed to welcome false positives, to avoid the dangers of false negatives. VAERS is highly prone to mix together actual ‘cause and effect’ with ‘true, true, and entirely unrelated.’ These are, simply, facts of the system, there by design.”

 

How many people die every day? A fact check article by Bill McCarthy at Politifact on May 6, 2021 titled Tucker Carlson’s misleading claim about deaths after COVID-19 vaccine says 8,000 people die from all causes.

 

Questionable reports in VAERS

 

The least credible report in VAERS was discussed by James R. Laidler in an archived article from his neurodiversity weblog back on July 27, 2006 titled Chelation & Autism which stated:

 

“The chief problem with VAERS data is that reports can be entered by anyone and are not routinely verified. To demonstrate this a few years ago I entered a report that an influenza vaccine had turned me into The Hulk. The report was accepted and entered into the database. Because the reported adverse event was so … unusual, a representative of VAERS contacted me. After a discussion of the VAERS database and its limitations, they asked my permission to delete the record, which I granted. If I had not agreed, the record would still be there still, showing that any claim can become part of the database, no matter how outrageous or improbable.”

 

An article by Jonathan Jarry at the McGill Office for Science and Society on June 18, 2021 titled Don’t Fall for the ‘VAERS Scare’ Tactic mentions other questionable reports: 

 

“To show that VAERS listings should not be taken at face value to mean that the vaccine caused the reported event, I trawled through the database’s reports on the COVID-19 vaccines. There were many, many reports of fever and injection site reactions (to be expected), but there were also, shall we say, head-scratching reports. A woman reported a large bald spot on top of her head following vaccination. Someone simply wrote in, ‘Nosebleed.’ I saw a report of ‘anal leakage.’ More than one person complained of suddenly becoming impotent. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the funniest report I saw stated, ‘My penis swelled to ten times its size.’ ”

 

How do the numbers of adverse events compare with the number of people vaccinated?

 

Some people proclaim that thousands or hundreds of thousands of adverse events have occurred. But those apparently large numbers need to be considered as a ratio (or percent) by dividing by the number of people which were vaccinated – hundreds of millions. We can look at an example from Idaho. An article by Bob “Nugie” Neugebauer at the Gem State Patriot News on July 17, 2021 titled Vaccination or termination reported that there were 438,441 total adverse events with 41,015 serious injuries and 9048 deaths. At that time there had been 156,982,549 people fully vaccinated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The table shown above gives the fraction of events compared with the number vaccinated, and multiplies by 100 to give the percentage. It also shows the reciprocal of the fraction, the odds of each event. The usual yardstick for a rare event is being struck by lightning. According to the National Weather Service the lifetime fraction is 0.00006356, which is bigger than the 0.0000576 for death after a COVID vaccination. The 41,015 serious injuries is a fraction of only 0.000261, or odds of 1 in 3,827. Yet Neubauer’s second paragraph instead had claimed:

   

“This is going to become a huge problem for employers who force their employees to take the shot as they may wind up assuming some if not all of the liability for any injuries that occur to their employees who required to take the shot. IACI’s president Alex LeBeau says that any incidents occurring from the vaccine should be covered by workmen’s compensation. You can bet that the courts are going to be full of cases where employers are going to be sued by employees for injuries caused by this covid medical device.”

 

Are there other databases better than VAERS?

 

Yes, of course there are. An article by Jonathan Howard at Science-Based Medicine on September 16, 2021 titled More thoughts on the VAERS pre-print mentions the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD):

 

“The VSD is an active monitoring system that is directly linked to patients’ medical records.  As such, it is not subject to the same limitations as VAERS, a passive monitoring system that contains unverified and possibly duplicate cases.”

 

The cartoon of a scared man was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.