For reasons explained the other day, I obviously didn't watch any of the longest tennis match ever played at Wimbledon.
But I couldn't help noticing on the news that John Isner was wearing a backwards-pointing baseball cap.
It reminded me of a friend who, on on a ski holiday in the USA, became so irritated by the sight of skiers wearing baseball caps back-to-front that he went into a sports equipment shop and asked if he could buy a backwards-pointing cap.
He claims that his request was taken seriously by the shop assistant, who explained that they didn't have any and helpfully suggested another shop in the same street that might have some in stock.
But it is, I suppose, just possible that the shop assistant was joking too.
Having missed George Osborne's first budget speech since he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, I was rather suprised to discover that excerpts from Harriet Harman's reply as Leader of the Opposition had already been posted on YouTube before anything had appeared there from the Chancellor himself.
Earlier in the afternoon, I'd also noticed that there'd been a few comments on Twitter to the effect that she'd made rather a good job of it - with some suggesting she did well enough to make them wonder why she wasn't standing in the Labour leadership election.
And quite a lively performance it was too, though my initial reaction after a single viewing was that the pluses were outweighed by the minuses. Other anoraks may like to check the comments against the actual video.
Pluses:
Excellent example of how effective 'yah-boo' politics can be in getting positive reactions from your supporters (for more on which, see HERE).
Well crafted script with plenty of examples of using techniques like contrasts, rhetorical questions and imagery (e.g. the 'fig leaf' sequence) to attack the LibDems.
Minuses:
Adapting Vince Cable's most famous line of attack on Gordon Brown came across as contrived and arguably unwise (unless, of course she wanted to remind people of the 'Stalin to Mr Bean' jibe in the second video below).
Her eyes were more or less continuously glued to the text, with only the occasional split second glance away from it.
Very little variation in pace and tone.
Repetitive gesture with left hand became monotonous and distracting after a while.
The pitch of her voice made me wonder whether, if she were to run for the full-time job of leader, she could benefit from some voice coaching along the lines of that undertaken by Mrs Thatche after she became leader of the Conservative Party (for more on which, see HERE).
The line Ms. Harman borrowed from Vince Cable's attack on Gordon Brown:
And, for a video of Gordon Brown adapting a line from Bill Clinton and the hazards of so doing, see HERE.
Regular readers will know that, like Olivia Mitchell and Martin Shovel, I'm underwhelmed by 'experts' who exaggerate the importance of body language and non-verbal behavior in communication (for more on which, see links below).
If ever proof were needed of how risky it can be to take Mehrabian myth (that 93% of communication is non-verbal) seriously - and take it a slight step further by treating 100% of it as non-verbal, look no further than the sequence from yesterday's World Cup match between Brazil and the Ivory Coast, when the referee sent a player off for not hitting an opponent in the face.
Repeated action replays, backed up by the BBC's panel of pundits, confirmed that the referee was not even looking at the two players involved when the 'incident' occurred (and nor, apparently, were his assistants). So he, or whoever it was who communicated verbally with him about what had supposedly happened, jumped to the wrong conclusion that anyone lying on the ground clutching his face must have been hit in the face - and waved his red card at the innocent Kaka.
Or perhaps the referee actually sent Kaka off for something the player communicated verbally in response to being falsely accused.
As it appears that any appeal to FIFA by Brazil is unlikely to get very far, we may never find out what the officials thought was going on.
(N.B. An earlier attempt to embed a YouTube clip of this particular sequence failed as a result of it having been barred by FIFA for 'copyright reasons'. If this one stops working, please let me know ASAP so I can try to find another one).
Other posts on body language & non-verbal communication:
