A lot is being said nowadays about how there are more cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States of America than in any other country, worldwide. The truth is, some countries just have more people than others. Indeed, there are only two counties with greater than a billion people and while China is likely deflating its numbers, India is just not reporting anything anyway. The third biggest nation, though, is these United States.
The United States is the biggest in the class of middle-sized countries, along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria, all with over two hundred million residents. You’d expect any of these top seven nations to have more cases than Nauru and Tuvalu, or even of France and Italy because there are much more people in these top seven countries than there are, by nature, in any of the smaller ones.
The long and short of this is that the proper way to compare infection rates is to do so relative to the population size. For instance, if the numbers are taken per million, you can see which counties are handling Covidapolis better than others. And that is exactly what the following graph shows.
This graph puts SARS-CoV-2 into perspective. A huge country like the United States or China should expect by virtue of just more people to have more cases than Italy. But when compared per million it’s clear that as of now, Italy is worse off, but we are headed there. So please, Shelter in Place, everyone!
As you can see, Italy is still ahead of the United States in terms of infections and mortality in terms of overall population size, but the United States isn’t abating and is on the road to match Italy of folks don’t properly Shelter in Place.
So please, my sapiosexual friends, just stay home.
Once again, I finished this book just in time, despite starting it right after The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities. Only this time, it’s because my commute went from an hour each way to five seconds each day to nothing because I’m on Weather and Safety Leave. Again, that’s a long story that, like yesterday, I’m punting for another day. Such is life with SARS-CoV-2, but in this respect I’m quite luck and still have my health. However, it does mean without that long commute, my reading time has become a fraction of what it was. But, I made it!
Noah Strycker spins a fascinating tale of the secret lives of birds. Clearly, the author loves class Aves and is an avid birder himself. His love of all modern dinosaurs shines through. Each chapter and section is set with a distinct theme and a story that focuses one one of our fine, feathered friends and how it relates to we mammals. So, without further à Deux, let’s dive in like a bunch if timid penguins!
Corvidae are smart! I’d never heard of any creature outside of the mammals passing the Mirror Test. The fact that some Magpies can utterly blew my mind. Heckle and Jeckle would have been proud! Damn, that bird family is cleaver! And the way Nutcrackers can remember where they cached food photographically is astounding! If we leave, I bet they’re taking over!
Hummingbirds are crazy violent. But Chickens take the cake, they are hierarchical. I mean, keeping track in your ranking up to thirty birds deep. Of course, it does break down with more than thirty and there’s still the triangle problem. Who knew chickens weren’t condorcet?
Now I want to see a Snowy Owl. I can’t believe a bounty of lemmings could cause a spike in populations that could bring the bird this far south. At least Washington State loves them, a lot more than they do the Spotted Owl, though that did inspire Hedwig. On the other hand, I want to see the Albatross but the Falkland Islands are so far away and then never serve them in my local theatre. If only I could get get around like a pigeon, especially a Homing Pigeon in case I get lost.
It was fascinating to hear that dummers can keep better time than Parrots. Which is to say, a Cockatoo can keep good time, but it isn’t good at noticing a change in tempo. It makes me wonder why they’re not as coordinated as Boirds or their prototype Starlings. Parrots still may have good hearing, but one thing’s for sure, Vultures have excellent eyesight. However, only Turkey Vultures can smell you from a meter away with its great, big nostrils, though not much more.
The main takeaway for me is how similar some bird behaviors are to humans. Bowerbirds males try to impress female birds to find a mate, and humans try to impress other humans in order to get a date. The birds build little shrines, complete with vanishing perspective, and we humans buy clothes, and cars, and houses, and do sports, or just become smart by reading lots of science books. And when you get the mate, being as faithful as a Fairy Wren could mean success. Then again, female Fairy Wrens who fool around do tend to live longer? 🤔
The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
From about 2020-03-23T14:30:00Z (10:30 am, Monday) to about 2020-03-23T23:30:00Z (7:30 pm, Monday), Google was redirecting all my email and either bouncing it or deleting it.
Too angry for words!
Let me repeat, google deleted or bounced my email for Nine Hours, as a part of the setup of my setup for a paid Google Apps account. The setup for these accounts are a bit weird. They require you to create a new google entity with your own company URL. Fortunately, I have multiple domains I own and maintain, including this one, TimeHorse.com.
I probably should have used my writing group domain, RestonWriters.org. After all, the whole reason I wanted to get a paid Google account is because Meetup was moving to Online-Only meetings, following the outbreak of SARS-COV-2, and I needed a tool that allowed for video conferencing.
Skype was a non-starter. For one thing, it’s great for person-to-person communications, but for group chats, it has this annoying habit of muting everyone except the current speaker and you have to wait until that speaker stops to get a word in edgewise. My understanding is WhatsApp has the same problem.
Meetup actually suggested using Google Hangouts or Zoom. I happen to like Zoom. I use it for my regular NPVIC Grassroots strategy meetings and for Toastmasters and it’s always worked great. Zoom does support up to a hundred participants, both free and Pro. The only problem is, each of those Zoom sessions are either limited to the free forty-minute block or are using an up-to-24-hour Zoom Pro Account. Since most of my Meetups are at least an hour, breaking meeting up into forty-minute chunks would be tedious. And, at $14.99 a month, the professional account is well out of my price range.
Just before the first week of Virtual meetings began, my writing colleagues and I, including Elizabeth Hayes, who runs The Hourlings, tested both free Zoom and Google Hangout. Despite being limited to ten people, we decided on Google Hangout and I mapped it to our official Virtual Meeting URL.
Ten people worked fine for Reston Writers and for the Saturday Morning Review. The Saturday Morning Review actually worked out quite well because Meetup, despite suggesting we move to a virtual platform, still won’t let you delete the venue from your event and mark it as virtual, which, when editing events can cause some confusion. But when the Library cancelled all our events, I just deleted them all from the Meetup Calendar, and recreated them with no Venue and just announced them as occurring in Cyberspace.
Stay with me folks, I’m getting to the email…
As Sunday approached, I new ten participants wouldn’t be enough. Google Hangout would be fine for Bewie Bevy of Brainy Books and Saturday Morning Review, and likely The Science Book Club, as they all usually have fewer than ten participants for each meeting. The Hourlings, on the other hand, often had twelve, and sometimes as many as sixteen!
I new Zoom was $14.99 a month, but I read that Google App accounts could up the number of participants to twenty-five. Unfortunately my 2TB Google Drive account didn’t qualify. I had to get a Google Apps account.
And that’s where my troubles began.
At first, I could only sign up for the $12 per month account, even though I’d read it could be had for $6. Since the setup has a fortnight trial period, I didn’t worry about the financial discrepancy. I set up the account with my business email address for TimeHorse, LLC. I associated it with with that email, it connected to my Gandi Registrar, and my account was ready to go. I created a Google Hangout and assigned it to the Virtual Meeting URL, hoping it would allow twenty-five. The plan was to use it with the Hourlings to verify that fact.
It failed! We still could only get ten people into the meetup despite it being a paid account.
Unfortunately, since Monday I’ve been on Weather and Safety Leave from work because my Telework agreement was revoked, but that’s a story for another day as this post is long as it is! However, it did allow me to speak to Google and they suggested I try Google Meet. Meet was included with all Google App paid accounts, and it would allow for up to a hundred people and could be as long as I needed. Also, I could downgrade to the $6 per month account and I would still be able to use it. I thus downgraded.
We tried it with Reston Writers Review and it worked wonderfully. We had up to twelve connections simultaneously! But I’m getting ahead of myself.
At around 10:30 am, that Monday, after chatting with Google, I was examining my Google Apps account more closely. It was telling me I had one last step I needed to complete: integrate me email with Gmail.
Stop, do not pass Go. You’re done!
That’s when my troubles began. You see, what this innocuous, turn-key step says it does is it says it sets up GMail for your company. What it actually does is obliterate all the MX Records (email routing information) of your DNS (Internet routing information) Zone File (routing configuration file) on Gandi and replace it with MX Records that point to Google. The setup wizard doesn’t actually tell you this and I’m totally oblivious.
At current writing, I have 188 forwarded email addresses set up on Gandi with their MX Servers. One of those is my business email, the one Google took over and is my Google Apps login. That’s the email google set up as the official email address used in GMail. Once the GMail setup goes through and I send an email from the GMail interface to my personal email address on the timehorse.com domain.
It never arrives. All day long, I watch my email and, strangely, nothing arrives after 10:30 in the morning. I refresh and refresh, and it’s still nothing. Where have all my emails gone?
It’s not until I’m setting up for Reston Writers that I decide to contact Google about this. I’m crazy-busy setting up the Google Meet, opening up the pieces we’d be reviewing on my computer, and, simultaneously, chatting with Google, trying to figure out why I’m not receiving any email.
Eventually, Google Tech Support starts talking about MX Records and a chill runs down my spine. As you probably gathered by now, I am well versed in DNS records and Zone File manipulation. I even have a Python script which updates my DNS A Record when the IP Address for this server changes.
With trepidation, I logged into my Gandi account and saw the damage. Google had modified my Zone file and added a bunch of strange new MX Records pointing to Google. They had nuked all my Gandi Email forward since they’d redirected all email traffic to google. As google only had one account registered on the domain, timehorse.com, namely my business email address, every other email address I possessed was either being deleted or bounced by google!
Fortunately, Gandi’s Email Forwarding page provides a warning when the Zone file doesn’t point to their email server, listing the correct MX Record settings to use Gandi as the mail hosting server. I quickly commented out the Google MX Records and pasted in the Gandi MX Records around 7:30 pm, in the middle of my Reston Writers meeting.
Needless to say, I was miffed that I could not give my full attention to my writers during our weekly writing gettogether. But it’s good I finally did figure out the disastrous actions committed by Google after only nine hours, and not a day or more.
I may never know what was contained in those nine hours of lost emails. I suppose there is one blessing, though. I get too much email already and still have dozens of unread messages I’m desperately trying to catch up on. One Covidapolis, novel-length email after another from every business under the sun. STFU companies, you’re all doing the same thing and I don’t like reading the same message again, and again, and again! You have a plan, that’s all I need to know!
Maybe Google was doing me a favor?
In the end, I was able to solve the problem because I got skills and I’m available for hire!
I love Kurzgesagt on YouTube, and as I was thinking of a way to explain what it means to flatten the curve, I noticed that the channel had just posted an excellent video on both SARS-CoV-2 and on the best way to keep the death toll down. Simply, shelter in place, and follow the instructions in my the post I just linked to.
Overall, I don’t think every Kurzgesagt video is up to the same scientific rigor that I try to maintain for my science posts, but that’s because, like this site as a whole, it’s not entirely a science channel so I can forgive it its minor excursions into Fiction. But this time, they did an excellent job explaining how the virus works, how to keep it at bay, and how to not overwhelm the healthcare system of your nation. Simply put, it’s another in a long list of great videos.
Many people are trying to show off empty shelves to indicate the panic that is Covidapolis, what I’m calling the panic around COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2. I personally think it’s bad form to post images of empty shelves of Sanitizers, Bottled Water, or Toilet Paper. I mean, it’s bad enough even the backup-backup-backup option from ancient times isn’t available.
Truth is, I already am good in that respect, and I have been since well before Covidapolis. From a Science point of view, though, the Economics of Hording is something I find fascinating.
Personally, I just wanted to stock up on some Orange Juice. So I get to the Tropicana section and as I approach, I am quite delighted to see the bounty. So many bottles ready to be purchased by me. I can just get my Low Acid Orange Juice and be on my way.
The thing is, I am a man with few ailments. But I do have one weakness, the acidity of citrus fruits. It’s a mild allergy. In small doses, I can tolerate even the most acidic fruits, but too much and my tongue starts to swell up and I start to sweat. Thus, I need my Low Acid Orange Juice.
Sadly, the Wegman’s in Dulles, VA has in the past be lax in stocking Low Acid. I have been there at least once where all Orange Juice was in stock except the Low Acid, and I had to drive all the way to Leesburg to get it. So, I knew even with all this Orange Juice, I may end up disappointed.
Big surprise, they were again out. I really think this Wegmans need to keep better track of its inventory of Low Acid Orange Juice, especially since most of the other grocery stores don’t carry Low Acid. It seems to me if they’re often running out with all other stocks a plenty, they probably should be stocking more of it. There’s certainly the demand. It’s capitalism, 101.
In the end, I decided to go with something more like regular juice than Orange Juice since I know the mixed Orange Drinks typically have lower acidity. Fortunately, I found Orange-Pineapple to suit the bill.
This post is about the PandemicNovel Coronavirus discovered in 2019, commonly known as COVID-19. Unless you’ve been vacationing on Mars, you’re almost certainly aware of this latest pathogen and heard enough frightening tales about it to keep make even Michael Crichton blush.
The trouble is, what are the facts and what is misinformation from all corners of everyday life. What I want to do is instead do some research, share my sources, and give my best interpretation on what best practices should be based on all the information that’s been made available to date.
First of all, we know the Coronavirus is related to SARS and the Common Cold. It is not a novel Flu bug. For one thing, it hits similar respiratory beats that those the Cold and SARS do. Indeed, the official name given to the Novel Coronavirus by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is SARS-CoV-2. The virus is also rather spikey, just like the Cold and SARS—Corona comes from the Latin word Coronam, meaning crown. For another, it’s the first pathogen to, within months of its discovery, to be entirely, genetically sequenced.
The virus itself is driven by a Positive-sense, Single-Stranded RNA, +ssRNA. The one of the first to decode a complete RNA sequence were the Chinese on 11 February, 2020, from a December 2019 sample. In that sample, the proteins encoded in the RNA are listed, where each letter in the sequence corresponds to a different protein. Since the Chinese sample, as of this writing 146 sequences have been decoded, though not all of them have the Protein analysis.
The beauty though is that, as we build a digital model of how the virus works, we will be able to much better adapt and derive pathways to block its effects or transmission, maybe even helping to develop a vaccine. That said, a vaccine at least a Phase 1 Clinical Trial to prove that it’s safe and non-toxic and what the right dose is among healthy individuals. Because it’s a vaccine, it’s unlikely to require Phase 2 and later trials in individuals with the condition as the vaccine is meant to be prophylactic. However, if the Phase 1 trial is small, a second trial is likely with just a larger healthy cohort. This whole process, however, will take months. With the sequences, it will be faster, but it’s not instantaneous.
From what we know about SARS, we expect the virus to mainly be transmitted from sneezing and coughing. Thus, it’s good to try to maintain a physical distance from others of about 2 meters (around 6 feet). Normally, beyond that distance, the respiratory droplets will desiccate and render the virus inert. But, some surfaces provide platforms which allow it to survive for hours or even days. Thus, it’s necessary to make sure you keep surface clean and disinfected.
Try to wash for at least 20 seconds, get between your fingers and rub the soap into your palms. Then rinse thoroughly and turn off the tap with your towel. Also, please wash your hands frequently—and don’t forget to moisturize to prevent them from cracking from the increased cleanliness. If a sink and fresh water isn’t available, try a 60%-alcohol sanitizer.
Consider washing after you step away from your computer or video game. Generally, after you touch anything that may have been touched by others. Also, avoid using your hands when possible. For instance, use your hips and elbows to open doors without a handle. And be mindful of where your mobile phone has been been.
The safest thing you can do is be mindful of your behavior. The western habit of shaking hands may finally become as outdated as spitting. Namaste, y’all!
I started this book right after finishing 18 Miles: The Epic Dreams of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather. Overall, I found the book a bit repetitive but it does bring up some interesting topics. I think the conclusion of we being born of both order and chaos is a nice ides given other books I’ve read that go into great detail on how unusual it is for biologic life to arise and how even more astronomical the odds are that a bacterium would take up residence in an archaea to make eukaryotes.
The survey of extrasolar planetary configurations was fun, however. I love the description of unusual systems like tight packing of planets, binary star systems, and life evolving on a Gas Giant moon. Although there are multiple ways a binary star system could have planets. For instance, one could have one star is a large (but not huge) one like our sun, and the other is a red dwarf, a bit larger than Jupiter, with the planet orbiting only the major star. But what Caleb Scharf seems to present is something more akin to two stars of relatively close mass orbiting one another tightly and a planet much farther out which orbits them both. In the later case, the idea that suns eclipse each other in regular cycles making the nature of a solar-centric universe much more amenable to budding intelligent life was a great and interesting flight of fancy that will help inform my better authorship of Science Fiction.
My main nit goes back to the first issue, though, with the mention of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the prologue. I thought the author did better introducing astronomical elements than he did biological elements and it was in the biological sections in which I was bogged down.
I am happy though to concede that with the modified Drake equation: [latex]N = R_* \cdot f_p \cdot n_e \cdot f_i \cdot f_e \cdot f_i \cdot f_c \cdot L[/latex] where,
[latex]R_*[/latex]: the average rate of star formation in a galaxy
[latex]f_p[/latex]: the fraction of those stars that have planets
[latex]n_e[/latex]: the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
[latex]f_i[/latex]: the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life (like bacteria or archaea) at some point
[latex]f_e[/latex]: the fraction of planets with life (like bacteria or archaea) that develop complex life (like eucaryotes)
[latex]f_i[/latex]: the fraction of planets with complex life (like eucaryotes) that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
[latex]f_c[/latex]: the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
[latex]L[/latex]: the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space
We know [latex]R_*[/latex] is about three percent more stars per year, and that [latex]f_p[/latex] is often greater than one, perhaps an average of four in modern surveys. [latex]n_e[/latex] is a little harder to determine as we generally define it as a goldilocks zone, but as the book points out, life with radically different chemistry could have a different universal solvent than water. Methane, CH₄, for instance. [latex]l_i[/latex] is a harder one but it seems this may indeed be quite common in any planet large enough to have plate tectonics and a hot core. The harder question is if [latex]l_e[/latex] is common or not. As we don’t exactly know how eucaryotes evolved or, more specifically, how such a symbiosis could evolve so stably without consuming it. Finally, [latex]f_i[/latex], [latex]f_c[/latex], and [latex]L[/latex] are all based on how intelligent life evolves and sustain itself, which, again, we have only one data point and can’t draw any conclusions from that at all. The main point though is we are getting closer to answering the first five terms at least and all are looking, even [latex]f_e[/latex], a bit like we are not alone.
One of the most interesting aspects, however, were the Zodiacal Light display. I never knew that was possible and now I definitely have it added to my Bucket List. It was fascinating to learn about all the planetary and extrasolar debris that just sits along the ecliptic plane. And I enjoyed the author’s discussions of the origin of our solar system and how it compares to the many other stellar systems possible.
Talking about how Copernicus made our universe more knowable by virtue of it being ordinary and nothing special was a great way of presenting the conundrum between Anthropocentrism and ubiquity implied by Copernicus. I think that is the most important conclusion: that we are both special and ubiquitous. That our journey to intelligent life was unique, but that there are many ways of for the universe to know itself, and we are only one of those ways.
The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities
Tis another somber day in Richmond today. But please know, hope is far but all lost. We fought, we spoke, and the esteemed Chariman Deeds was very kind to us all (he would have made a most excellent—and lawabiding—Governor!)
I met Eileen Reavey at the Senate Committee Meeting Room 3 as the Senate was still in Virginia Session. Pam, Nancy, and all my fellow NPVIC: Virginia advocates were there and we watched with anticipation for the Committee Meeting to begin.
I was shocked, though, to see a number of luddite Anti-Vaccine women who have clearly been watching porn-star videos and disbarred British researchers far too much to understand the basics concepts of Herd Immunity and Correlation does not mean Causation. They were apparently there to taunt us NPVIC folks but we would not be intimidated. We knew we had right and logic on our side.
Eventually, the Senate Floor session the Senators started assembling. My dear friend Sen. Jennifer Barton Boysko was one of the first to appear and of course we waved at each other. Finally, my good friend Delegate Mark Levine showed up, and we supporters all gathered around to take a photo together.
Supporters of the NPVIC gather in the Virginia Senate Committee Room 3 right before the vote on HB177. Pictured, among others, is Mark Levine, Eileen Reavey, Pam Berg, Nancy Kolb, and of course, myself.
Senator Deeds moved the committee along and as promised HB177: the NPVIC, was second on the docket. Mark, the chief patron, spoke first, and then Senator Janet Howell (Reston) made a motion to pass the committee. Senator Deeds stopped the motion, though, as he knew members of the public wanted to speak. The order was somewhat random but I got to deliver my years speech, which Deeds already knew, then went into my comparison of Bristol VA, vs. Bristol TN, and how although at the state and legislative level these two communities were divided, at the national level, they are a common interest gerrymandered and the solution is the NPVIC.
Senator Deeds then asked me what happens in the case of a tie, and I explained to him that only those states which were close would be required to recount. Any state that wasn’t close would not recount. And in the case of an absolute tie, say 65,321,865 to 65,321,865, then what happens is the NPVIC is dissolved for that election and each state goes back to its old way of choosing electors—typically winner take all.
One of the speakers was from Falls Church and she and her husband came to troll the hearing. They both sat in seats reserved for delegates which demonstrated them clearly as having no sense of decorum or decency. Add to that, they had the temerity to take some of the things I have said, on the NPVIC Page on Facebook, as chief moderator, completely out of context.
For instance, when I call the NPVIC a Beta Test, I do not mean it is a questionable movement that is merely a joke or that it indicates some weakness. On the contrary, when I say that what I mean is, we are very certain of our goals and the expected results, but if we’re wrong, it’s easy to repeal, while repealing a Constitutional Amendment is hard.
I could not defend my statements but Eileen helpfully was able to clarify that neither her organization, nor the official organization, was associated with them. The Grassroots Page I run, as well as our Twitter feed, @NPVGrassroots are personal interest resources used to recruit, defend, and explain the NPVIC in a friendly, rapid-response way. I hone my skills there in being able to think quickly to defend against any argument to the NPVIC and have become quite adept at addressing every concern for it, having even amicably sparred with @TaraRoss, famous anti-NPVIC debater, herself.
In the end, Mark wanted a chance to address all the detractors, but Jennifer Boysko had a quiet word with him and in the end, though Senator Jill Vogel tried to get the bill tabled, Jennifer, realizing they didn’t have the votes, made a motion to pass by until the 2021 session. Jennifer was nice enough to message me on Facebook that she was doing that but Eileen and I had already discussed the possibility so it wasn’t a surprise. But it was very nice for Jennifer to come down and tell me herself in person.
Overall, the NPVIC in Virginia may be dead in 2020, but we have a better chance in 2021, after the election is over, and we still hold out hope for Florida!
Though Eileen, Pam, Nancy, and Mark left after the vote, I was in Richmond for two more bills. Namely, Delegate Cia Price‘s HB1255 (proper Gerrymandering protections which are tragically absent from the Virginia Constitutional Amendment) and HB1256 (sets up a commission similar to the Amendment). HB1255 was sent to the Finance Committee without Amendment.
Finally, it was HB1256’s turn. Unfortunately, Senator Jennifer McClellen had spoken with legal staff and raised the issue that, if the flawed Redistricting Amendment didn’t pass, HB1256 would be null and void. Cia didn’t like this but McClellen insisted the bill be amended to work with the Amendment before it went to Finance. Cia was not happy, and neither was I.
I spoke to Cia afterwards to try and assure her that as long as McClellen’s amendment addressed the Redistricting Amendment, should that pass, but preserved HB1256 in its entirety should it not pass, that we should still support it and keep fighting that troublesome Redistricting Amendment. Senator Howell is chair of Senate Finance and as many of my friend are her constituents, I will be asking all of them to insist she make sure McClellen’s Amendment leaves HB1256 unchanged with no Amendment and works with the Amendment if it does, unfortunately pass.
The good news is that none of these bills are dead. We will have a chance on Thursday to see if we can get as pure an HB1256 as possible and get HB1255 out of committee as well, and next year, we will be adding Virginia to the NPVIC!
I decided to check how far #CO2Fre was charging. Just 20kW, but then, I was almost full when I got there. I’ll have to try again on Wednesday when I drive to work, then Bowie, and back for the Bowie Bevy of Brainy Books when my Charge Level will be much, much lower.
Thank you to Lanny Hartmann at Plug-In Sites on twitter for bringing this new station to my attention! Check out his amazing site for all kinds of Electric Car news.
I joined Toastmasters last year to both practice my public speaking and to lear to be a better performer when acting. I enjoyed answering Table Topics and being challenged to come up with a spontaneous speech—at least when I knew what the topic was—but when it came to my own Ice Breaker speech, I kept putting it off.
The thing is, I don’t like talking about myself. I love writing fiction and talking about Science but when it comes to my personal life, I get embarrassed and ashamed. Much of my personal story is really not for public consumption and is rather confounded with emotional difficulty and lack of self-worth. I do hope through Toastmasters, to overcome that, just as I have found Cosplay to help with my self-image, but that journey isn’t the subject of this post.
Instead, I want to talk about my Ice Breaker.
I decided to cover my digital self. As you can see from the side menu in the upper-right corner of my site, I have a lot of social networks accounts! Indeed, the currently 26 or so I have listed there are only a fraction of the dozen or so twitter accounts I have, the half-dozen Facebook pages I run, the three instagram accounts I control, the dozens of meetups I’m in with my two accounts, one professional, one personal. Or even the fact that I have a separate blog for Reston Writers and one for the Affordable Electric Car NOW!
Of course, seasoned ToastMasters will know that your Ice Breaker is actually 4–6 minutes, not 5–7, so my speech ran long. And I did tend to lose my place as I spoke, having had no time to memorize it word for word. Nonetheless, I did my best and delivered my speech and got some great advice from my friends and colleagues at the Loudoun ToastMasters, club 5154. My mentor Jonathan gave me some amazing and helpful advice and I am so thankful to all of my fellow Toastmasters!
