Monday, July 18, 2016

Everyone thinks they are the Center of the Universe


























We’ve all met some of those people. They will proudly tell us they’re an Influencer, Thought Leader, the Number One Authority, or the Greatest in the World. Up in Wallace they have a manhole cover with the ultimate boast. An article at Atlas Obscura on July 13, 2016 describes how The Self-Proclaimed Center of the Universe is in Wallace, Idaho. But the Exploratorium has a web page titled Where is the center of the universe? which instead explains:

“When astronomers look at distant galaxies to determine how fast they're moving, it looks like they're all moving away from us. Does that mean we're at the center of the universe? Well, no. It turns out that every point in the universe sees itself as the center!”




























Atlas Obscura has another article on Felicity, California: Center of the World. I thought instead the center was way down at the core and unreachable, as shown schematically above.



















When you write a speech, you have to deal with how people think. They will consciously or unconsciously be asking what’s in it for me (WIIFM)? Back on June 20, 2007 Gavin Meikle wrote about For persuasive presentations don’t forget WIIFM. There’s a recent two-minute YouTube video with Scott Schwertly of Ethos3 discussing How do I make sure my presentation addresses the idea of WIIFM? Scott says you need to answer three questions: What?, So what? and Now what?

An image of that manhole cover was modified from one by Jan Kronsell at Wikimedia Commons, as was the image of the earth’s core.

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