Literature of the Pitiful and Powerpoint

I recently came across two links to mock Powerpoint Presentations.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/dradosh/ppaol.html&e=7620
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm


Of course they mock powerpoint by showing how it could make great works common, even laughable.

Today in class, I had the opposite experience. The presentation of a man's pitiful (in the most literal sense) life made it hilarious. After spending 5 weeks teaching us his theory of the world of Linguistic Evolution, he had us read a dissenting opinion. Fair enough. And then in class, he described the clash of the minds he had personally had with the author.

Long story short: my prof said the author of the article had not really disagreed. In fact, the author came to my prof's aid when the author was also the editor of a journal my prof was submitting to. He switched slides, and we got a glimpse of this "defense." Snippets I can remember of this alleged defense, "though [my prof]'s tone is admittedly grating, he may be proved to be right in a few decades" and "I would push to allow [my prof] to resubmit this paper after fixing many widespread criticisms". This man was taking his personal correspondence and showing it to all of us, seeming unaware that his best ally was only praising with faint damn! Note to self: make sure to redact all mentions of phallus as "not intolerably small" in collected letters before dying.

In any case, many good htoughts. Look in the coming months on this blog for a short story written in .ppt (that's Powerpoint format, you technically illiterates).