Al Johnson
Seeker of wisdom
How One Clear Verb Can Take Your Presentations From Blah To Amazing. We can learn a lot from actors. Take a look at the work of two of my favorites, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. I suggest Susan Sarandon in The Client and Sean Penn in Milk. And I suggest Sarandon and Penn together in Dead Man Walking. All four are Oscar-nominated performances, deservedly so. Sarandon won for Dead Man, Penn for Milk. Frame by frame, their performances are sharp, crisp, luminous. Penn and Sarandon are smart actors. Here’s one thing every actor learns at some point in acting class: You take a scene in a script and you break it into beats. 1.The objective needs to be an action verb. 2.It needs to describe the impact I seek to have on another person. 3.It needs to be visceral for me. Action verbs matter because they unleash forward-moving velocity.
So--let’s take this very simple notion and apply it to our everyday relating. Creating Intent in Formal Presentations Not every moment in a professional relationship needs to produce Oscar-worthy fireworks. Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies. LOGIC AND WRITING. SPOTLIGHT ON WRITERS. Write. Critical thinking web. Developing Questions for Critical Thinking.
Propaganda Techniques. Propaganda designers have been putting messages into television commercials, news programs, magazine ads, and other things we read and see for years. These messages have been carefully designed to influence our opinions, emotions, attitudes and behavior. Their purpose is to persuade us to believe in something or to do something that we would not normally believe or do. These messages have been designed to benefit someone, and that someone may not be you! It's not as easy as you might think to spot hidden messages. Nothing says that you can't appreciate a good piece of propaganda, and still agree with the messages hidden within it. Is everything we see and hear propaganda?
To protect yourself against the techniques of propaganda, three good questions to ask yourself are: Who does this benefit? Critical Thinking. Critical thinking skills.