What I Learnt Today

On the weekend we attended a birthday party where there were some excellent speeches.

It is normal to be anxious before giving a talk or making a speech. Using this nervous energy is the key to being natural and engaging. At a 50th birthday party at the weekend we heard some excellent speeches.

It is a great pity that we miss out on the wisdom of many people because their anxiety prevents them from sharing it before a crowd.

The most important part of public speaking is being prepared. I’m in awe of people who can get up before a crowd and speak completely off the cuff. Some politicans I’ve seen are excellent at this (Tony Abbott is very good, and I suspect Julia Gillard is also). School teachers are also excellent at speaking without much notice. For us lesser mortals, the key to giving a good speech is preparation.

At our workshops, I’ve seen some professional speakers give wonderfully engaging, funny and informative talks – and they appear to be making it up as they go along. When we get them back at subsequent workshops, they give the same ‘impromptu’ talk – word for word, pause for pause, gesture for gesture. Preparation.

Garr Reynolds, our friend from Presentation Zen, has a post this week on ‘Dealing with Public Speaking Nerves‘. He includes five tips from Les Posen, a Melbourne based psychologist who has his own blog called ‘Presentation Magic‘. 

Les’s tip are:

1. Chunking and exposure.

Break your talk into small parts.

 

2. Rehearsal.

Visualise yourself wowing the crowd as you practice

 

3. Self-talk.

“I can do this”.

 

4. Arousal control via diaphragmatic breathing.

Slow, deep breaths.

 

5. Deliberate practice.

Practice the beginning, ending and other key parts of the talk.

You can read more about Les’s tips at Presentation Zen. 

I look forward to seeing and hearing your next ‘tour de force’.

PS. I suspect some of the nerves of the speakers at the birthday party we attended were quelled using a very traditional liquid remedy (or two). Moderation is the key to this particular cure.

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Internet access on the go using your iPhone as a modem.

Apple released an upgrade to the iPhone operating system this week (iOS 4.3), which makes it easy to create a ‘Personal Hotspot’ using your iPhone.

This means that you can use your iPhone to give your laptop or iPad access to the internet. This is of particular advantage if you are using the non-3G enabled iPad (Robyn take note).

It is easy to activate  ‘Personal Hotspot’.

Open ‘Settings’ on your iPhone

Select ‘Personal Hot Spot’

You will see that a random password has been supplied. Change it if you like.

Slide the switch to turn Personal Hot Spot On.

That’s it.

If you have an iPhone 4, your phone will be discoverable as one of the WiFi networks available to your laptop or iPad(on the Mac, this is from the Airport menu). Up to 3 devices can network via WiFi.

You will also be able to use the HotSpot via a USB connection or Bluetooth – so you could provide internet access to 5 devices altogether.

(If you have an iPhone 3 or 3GS, only the HotSpot or Bluetooth options are available – the WiFi option does not work on these older models)

Make sure that you have a good data plan before using your iPhone as a hot spot. Excess data charges can be vey high – especially overseas!

 

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Seismograph at Riverview Observatory, Sydney.

The Earthquake this weekend in Japan measured 8.9 on the Richter Scale. Christchurch’s earthquake on Feb 21st scored 6.3. Yet they say Japan’s was 1000 times stronger than New Zealand’s. How does that work?

The magnitude of an earthquake is measured using a scale developed by Charles Richter in 1934.  It is based on the largest earth movement detected during a quake on a seismograph. The range of possible wave amplitudes is vast – from tiny movements that humans won’t notice to the enormous tremors we have seen in Japan and NZ.

This is the seismograph recording taken from the Riverview Observatory in Syndey on March 11th this week. You can see the Honshu earthquake hitting at 5.46 (UTC)

Because of the large range of possible readings, the Richter Scale is logarithmic. This means that a quake that is one unit bigger than another on the scale actually causes 10 times more movement.  A quake measuring 9 causes ten times bigger movement than a quake measuring 8, one hundred times more than a quake measuring 7, and a thousand times more than a quake measuring 6.

This table, reproduced from http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/magnitude.html, shows how earthquakes are graded according to this scale.

Earthquake Magnitude Scale

Magnitude	Earthquake Effects	Estimated Number Each Year
2.5 or less	Usually not felt, but can be recorded by seismograph.	900,000
2.5 to 5.4	Often felt, but only causes minor damage.	30,000
5.5 to 6.0	Slight damage to buildings and other structures.	500
6.1 to 6.9	May cause a lot of damage in very populated areas.	100
7.0 to 7.9	Major earthquake. Serious damage.	20
8.0 or greater	Great earthquake. Can totally destroy communities near the epicenter.	One every 5 to 10 years

So the Richter Scale measures the amount of shaking movement an earthquake causes. However, the actual destructive power of an earthquake (it’s seismic power) scales to a higher factor against the amount of movement. So, a difference of one on the Richter Scale means 10 times the amount of shake but 30 times the destructive power. A difference on the Richter Sale of 2 means 100 times more movement but 1000 times more destructive power. Hence the relationship quoted in the initial text above. The Christchurch earthquake had 42 Kilotons of energy – the Japanese earthquake 336 Megatons!

The amount of damage done by a quake to a city also depends on how close the epicenter of the quake is to the city centre, how deep the quake is, and on the nature of the buildings in the city.

The earthquake in Christchurch was only 6km from the city center, at a depth pf 5km. The Japanese earthquake was 130km from Sendai (in the Pacific Ocean) at a depth of 24km. (most of the destruction has been caused by the ensuing tsunamai).

Earth tremors occur every 5 minutes in Japan, and there are 2000 quakes a year that can be felt by people. Because of the risk, traditional houses use paper architecture, and there are earthquake instruction signs in every building. This all seemed funny when we were there – but very sensible now.

On the US Geological Survery site you can compare detailed measurements of the Japanese earthquake on March 11th and of the Christchurch quake on Feb 21st

The recent Japanese earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded. The Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 (which caused the devastating Tsunamai_ measured 9.3, and the largest earthquake ever recorded was the Valdivia earthquake in Chile in 1960, measuring 9.5.

It is somewhat sobering to view all the earthquakes happenning around the world each day. There have been 507 earthquakes in the last week, as shown on the map below. You can check the live report here.

 

 

 

 

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Today we were guests at a delightful wedding on the beach at Byron Bay.

The first reading was from the Gospel according to Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin was a prolific journal keeper – the prototypical blogger! His complete works are available online at http://darwin-online.org.uk/. His private papers are held by Cambridge University, and amongst these is Darwin’s methodical anaylsis of the benefits of marriage.

In July 1838, aged 29, he had returned from his 5 year voyage on the HMS Beagle and had spent 2 years back in London living in grand batchelor style. A decision had to made. In his journal, he  weighed up the Pros and Cons of marriage using a scientific approach.

This is the Question

Marry

• Children (if it Please God)
• Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
• Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
• Home, & someone to take care of house
• Charms of music and female chit-chat
• These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
• My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
• Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
• Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
• Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London

 

Not Marry

• Freedom to go where one liked
• Choice of Society and little of it
• Conversation of clever men at clubs
• Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
• Expense and anxiety of children
• Perhaps quarrelling
• Loss of Time
• Cannot read in the evenings
• Fatness and idleness
• Anxiety and responsibility
• Less money for books etc.
• If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
• Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool

 

Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.

 

Having come to this decision, he wasted no time. To be his ‘nice soft wife on the sofa’, he chose his first cousin Emma Wedgewood, one year older than he was. Darwin wrote to her about his expectations. “I think you will humanize me, & soon teach me there is greater happiness than building theories, & accumulating facts in silence & solitude.” How could she resist?

He had known Emma since childhood. Her grandfather, Joshua Wedgewood, had earned a fortune in the ceramics and pottery business. They were married in January 1839 after a three month engagement. Charles suffered with frequent illness, and Emma cared for him and their 10 children till his death aged 73. It appears his analysis of the pros and cons of marriage was confirmed!

However, history does not tell us the reckoning from Emma’s point of view!

 

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In all likelihood, you will have seen the Old Spice Guy ad. Some of you may have studied It in some detail. Isaiah Mustafa has it all – romance, diamonds, yachts, horse-riding on the beach, muscles. If your man can’t look like him, at least he could smell like him if he stopped using those lady-scented body washes.

Here’s a reminder;

But did it work – did it sell more Old Spice? And has the company followed up on all the attention?

(more…)

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