THe Podium and the Grave
You know what my favourite game is? Public Speaking.
Today I get to play a special no-holds-barred version, where the audience ask me a bunch of questions and plus also I\m horibly unprepared, and I get given a mark at the end that determines whether or not I've wasted the last three months!
Yaaaaaaaaay
posted by Nathan @ 7:19 am
4 Comments:
If they stump you with a question, just laugh like a crazy person and shake your head. "Whew, that was a good one, Theodore."
More importantly, remember that the key to public speaking is using odd numbered lists. Lists are powerful...unless they have an even number of items.
I've found that numbering lists using combinations of number sequences helps to distract the viewers. If you have a list that consists of only prime and fibonacci numbers, most people focus on that; 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 23, 29, 31, 34 etc because it seems almost to fit a pattern, but not quite.
Also, I met someone today who feels that time is a complete social construct. When I delved further (a mistake), he seemed unable to explain and denied the existance of natural time based cycles (the moon, a year, crop growth...) and blamed time predominantly on Christianity, but also religion in general.
I never knew you were the kind of person who rolled with Prime numbers.
If I had been in your position, I would have dedicated all my energy to trying to get the other person to use the phrase "the man".
It is a curious world we live in where an educated person who asserts things like "morality exists" is likely to be either religious or anti-religious.I have thoughts on this topic, but as it's a philosophical blog I'm going to delay it until I've submitted this thesis and got some rum in me.
I like all numbers. I'm a number person. I would've used two number patterns, but if you're trying to confuse others and combining lists, you have to use primes. They're so common that most people who we (ie people in the mathematical sciences) work with recognize the list after 2, 3, 5, 7, or 11, 13, 17, 19.
I wanted to talk to the guy some more, but was limited by the fact that he left, so didn't get to have him perform any tricks. Otherwise I would have started making up quotes and attributing them to "Eisenstein", "Arisottle" and "Curried" and other great scientists and philosophers.
I got a game for you to play. I'll do it on facebook, later, though, 'cause it's long and this is long enough.
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