I’ve heard and read horror stories about the sinister slideshow spawn seen as a result of fancy presentation making software as a result of the temptation or perhaps desire to cripple content contained within a presentation. How easy it is to mask the fact that the emperor has no clothes when all the razzle-dazzle one needs to misdirect and mislead an audience is available at the click of a button! We hear about these things happening in the business world and the military. If the PMO started using PowerPoints (or Keynotes or their brethren) to address the nation, you can bet it’d be happening there, too ((For now, politicians do not need it since they often possess the gift of the gab — oratory PowerPoint.)). But is it happening in academia, a community that takes pride in its supposed openness and ability to challenge what it thinks it knows? Are academics guilty of content concealment by …
Continue reading Good presentations: Part II — Content or charisma?
When attending presentations, I seem to have one of two reactions. One is to become very drowsy. This is clearly a bad reaction. The other is to become fidgety. I suppose this is a bad thing from, too, but, at least in my case, I think it’s a good sign. …
Continue reading Good presentations: Part I — Fidgeting
The Paperclip Chronicles document adventures involving the humble paperclip, a piece of office stationery so versatile that it has become a staple (no pun intended) of my day-pack.
A few months ago on a cold, wintery day, Alecia Fowler was afflicted by two wardrobe malfunctions. One of them would have made a Victorian blush while the other …
Continue reading The Paperclip Chronicles: Episode I — Alecia’s Wardrobe
Last week, I heard about a certain intellectually precocious third-grader whose ability to make persuasive arguments as to what he should and should not be permitted to do sometimes consternated his parents. I pressed further neither into the nature nor subject of the arguments, but I was told that his parents delivered a solid “no” …
Continue reading The trump argument
jonathan lung