Cory Booker delivered the longest speech in the history of the United States Senate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cory Booker is a Democrat and the senior senator from the state of New Jersey. Starting at 7:00 PM on on March 31, 2025 he delivered the longest speech in the history of the Senate – lasting for twenty-five hours and five minutes. There is a Wikipedia page titled Cory Booker’s marathon speech. He protested Donald Trump’s second term as president.

 

There is an article about it by Robin Camarote at Inc. on April 2, 2025 titled Cory Booker and the Art of Authentic Communication. A second article by Suzanne Lucas, also at Inc. on April 2, 2025 is titled Leadership lessons from Cory Booker’s filibuster: Focus on the message, not the spotlight. And there is a third article by Stephen Khan at The Conversation on April 4, 2025 titled The hidden power of marathon Senate speeches: What history tells us about Cory Booker’s 25-hour oration.

 

The portrait of Senator Booker is from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Remembering skeptical investigator Joe Nickell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have long enjoyed reading articles and books by Joe Nickell, particularly his Investigative Files columns in Skeptical Inquirer magazine. There is an article by Blake Smith at The Skeptic on March 10, 2025 titled Joe Nickell, legendary skeptical investigator, dies at the age of 80. A second article by Jonathan Jarry at the McGill Office for Science and Society on March 14, 2025 is titled Remembering Joe Nickell, Skeptical Icon. A longer third article by Benjamin Radford at the Center for Inquiry on March 12, 2025 is titled The Joe I Know. There is a good magazine article about him by Burkhard Bilger in The New Yorker for December 23 and 30, 2002 titled Waiting for Ghosts. Joe wrote about thirty books and hundreds of magazine articles.

 

Among other things, he is known for his work on the holy Shroud of Turin, and having produced a no-so-holy Shroud of Bing Crosby. If you are looking for a skeptical take on several topics for a speech, then look up his 2011 book titled Tracking the Man-Beasts: sasquatch, vampires, zombies and more.   

 

A 2018 portrait  came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Add a hundred or more gestures to your vocabulary with baby sign language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article in the April 2023 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Back to the BASICS that has a section on pages 16 and 17 titled 10 Strategies to Boost Your Gestures and Body Language. Under gestures it says five things:

 

1]  Train yourself to gesture more.

2]  Learn from the pros.

3]  Create a gesture for each main point.

4]  Observe yourself in action.

5]  Have a dress rehearsal.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But it doesn’t say where to get those gestures. One good source is American Sign Language (ASL). The alphabet is shown above, and in a video. There is a comprehensive 600-page book from August 2021 (editor in chief Clayton Valli) titled The Gallaudet Dictionary of American Sign Language with 3000 entries. And there is a third edition of another shorter book from 2014 by Lottie L. Riekehof titled The Joy of Signing: A dictionary of American signs.      

 

Where can you find a more compact set of ASL gestures to learn? At Open Lines on November 14, 2022 there is a blog post titled Sign Language: How to Teach Your Baby to Communicate describing eleven signs. 

 

And there are books about teaching sign language to babies. My local Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library has a 2018 book by Lane Rebelo titled Baby Sign Language Made Easy and subtitled 101 Signs to start communicating with your child now. Another 2021 book by Diane Ryan is titled Baby Sign Language: More than 150 signs baby can use and understand (easy peasy). There is a preview at Google Books that on page 67 discusses signs for eat and drink:

 

“EAT: Your hand moves back and forth – toward and away – from your mouth as if eating.

DRINK: Pretend you’re holding a glass and taking a sip.”

 

There is a Signing Time Dictionary web site with 400 entries (including brief videos) for both eat and drink.  

 

Images for the first and final gesture for drink, and the ASL alphabet are from Wikimedia Commons.

 

According to a Pearls Before Swine cartoon there are four groups of people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrixes. The Pearls Before Swine cartoon by Stephen Pastis for March 30, 2025 has a line drawing of the graphic shown above (without axis labels), and the following dialogue:

 

Pig: Oh, great Wise Ass, help me to understand humanity.

 

Wise Ass: Of course, my son… All people can be classified into one of four quadrants which look like this…

 

Wise Ass: We love Group(A), tolerate Group(B), and pity Group(C).

 

Pig: That all sounds good, but what about Group(D)? The Dumb and Arrogant.

 

Pig: I know who’s been running our lives.

 

 

Allokataplixis is a recent word for that feeling when travel makes everything new

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In an article by Liam Henneghan at Aeon on September 18, 2017 titled We have a new word for that feeling when travel makes everything new he described the compound word allokataplixis, from Greek words for other and wonder. That article also was reposted at Big Think on February 23, 2021 and again at Pocket. I felt that way when I saw Crater Lake.

 

Another article by Avard Woolaver at The Image Journey on October 3, 2020 is titled Toronto Gone – allokataplixis – seeing the city for the first time. More recently there is yet another article by Joe Walewski at Field Notes – A Naturalist’s Life on March 29, 2024 titled Allokataplixis.

 

I blogged about going to Crater Lake on September 10, 2019 in a post titled Visiting Crater Lake. And on September 21, 2019 I blogged about The joy of travel surprises.

 

Square Units: an amusing comic strip at xkcd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Randall Munroe’s xkcd webcomic on March 19, 2025 there is the comic about numbers shown above titled Square Units.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In it, a message about the area of grass devoured by an insect gets distorted each time it is passed on - as is graphically shown above.  

 

The Explain xkcd web page says that:

 

“In this comic, Megan is using her phone to read about an insect species that consumes (hyperbolically described as ‘devours’) one square inch of grass per day. As it is relayed through a chain of conversations, this measurement gets misinterpreted up to 12 times until Hairbun tells other people that it devours an area of grass equal to two times the land area of Australia per day….

 

This gross error is the result of repeatedly misinterpreting the number of square units as the side length of a square, thus increasing the described area by the power of two.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It’s a wild exaggeration of the old “Game of Telephone.”

 

The cartoon phone woman was adapted from OpenClipArt.  

 

An excellent story about being careful to solve the right problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design thinking is a set of cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures that designers use. I have been skimming a 2025 book by Fred Estes titled Design Thinking: a guide to innovation. There is an excellent story on pages 86 and 87 that you can read at Google Books:

 

“Case Study: The Town Pool

 

In one Scandinavian town, the community swimming pool had always been a hub of activity, and everyone enjoyed it. But in a brief span of time, attendance dropped sharply. The concerned town council jumped to the conclusion that the pool complex had become outdated and believed a new pool was the answer. They selected an architect and invited him to present design concepts for their multimillion-dollar vision.

 

Yet when the architect arrived at the council meeting, he didn’t bring intricate scale models of a proposed pool complex. Instead, he held up a single sheet of paper. The architect explained that he closely inspected the pool and then talked with the people in town, especially frequent swimmers. After these conversations, he realized an outdated pool wasn’t leading to poor attendance. The sheet he held up? The town’s bus schedule.

 

One of the town’s bus routes ran right by the pool, and most people rode the bus to the pool. But the town’s transportation department had recently changed the bus schedule so that the buses only ran along the route to the pool in midmornings and midafternoon. They dropped the early morning and later afternoon runs – the times when most of the daily swimmers went to the pool before or after work. The architect’s insight was simple – revert to the old bus timetable.

 

Taking his advice, the town saw pool attendance rebound to the previous levels and saved time and millions of tax dollars. This architect had done more than solve a problem. He made sure the town solved the real problem. The town learned the value of placing their ladder against the right wall.”

 

If the pool got outdated, then attendance should have gradually tapered off, and not dropped suddenly.  

 

The swimmer cartoon was adapted from an image at OpenClipArt.