Change has come.

Actually change is happening all the time. Things change. That's the thing. The question is whether we are part of creating the change we want or just observing as things change.

Anyway, what has caught my attention is mr Obama's public speaking skills. Here is obviously a very clever man, sharp, thoughtful and great at captivating an audience.

One thing that he does more consistently than a lot of other speakers is to open up the "command module" in the brains of the listeners by his very repetitive downward inflections. Try it out yourself. Make a command statement and notice how the natural language process will be to end it with a downward inflection, like in "Now I want you to go asleep." But when you ask a question, it is upwards like in "Did you go to sleep?"

Leaders need to create followers and getting acceptance for your statements or commands is a key part of getting there. But a lot of speakers don't use everything they have at their disposal to get their message across. Sometimes their language is incongruent. George Bush is incongruent a lot when he talks. To the point where most people can tell when he is being quite liberal with the truth so to speak.

Other speakers do a fairly good job but not consistently. McCain is not a bad public speaker, but he is not excellent. Obama is excellent and what he does much more is use the tone of his voice to his advantage and especially in hammering home statements and sometimes embedded commands by these downward inflections.

I'm not saying that you should think about this when you are doing your presentations. Or... think about it.