I (Heart) Powerpoint

Working within the marketing group of a large corporation, I come across Powerpoint presentations all the time, sometimes two to three times daily. Internal presentations to management. External presentations to potential partners or clients. Anything that requires focused communication or more aptly put, "a quick and dirty". Why should senior managers have to waste precious time reading a long-winded tome when a simple one page bulleted summary will suffice? Or so the conventional thinking goes. Regardless, in the span of a mere decade, Powerpoint has become the ubiquitous tool of modern business and is now the primary method of formal management communications taught in every MBA program worldwide. My project groups in the MBA program rely on it almost exclusively for our presentations. But Powerpoint has also been the target of considerable criticism for the very reasons that contributed to its success, namely its simplicity. Critics like Edward Tufte at Yale have blasted its emphasis on form over substance (see Powerpoint is Evil, link here). But recently, an unlikely person has come to Powerpoint's defense. David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads, has been crowing about the use of Powerpoint as a medium of art. Apparently, he made his "pitch" a couple of days ago to an audience on the Berkeley campus (link here). Lecture, performance art, and tongue-in-cheek commentary all rolled up into one gloriously strange and hilarious hourlong presentation. According to the article, the original two creators of Powerpoint, both Cal graduates apparently, were in the audience, laughing along with the others.

The Gettysburg Address (as a Powerpoint Presentation)

Google "technologist" Peter Norvig parodied Powerpoint by presenting Abraham Lincoln's well-known Gettysburg Address using a Powerpoint slide presentation (link here). Clever.

The Christian Scientist

Apparently, one of the world's preeminent physicists is also an ardent and outspoken Christian. And a Berkeley professor to boot. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Charles Townes, a long time professor of physics at Berkeley and co-inventor of the laser and the maser for which he won a Nobel Prize, was just awarded the $1.5 million Templeton Prize, known as the world's richest annual prize, for his lifelong attempts to reconcile science and religion (link here and here). One excerpt from the article: "Townes said that, with findings of modern physics, it 'seems extremely unlikely' that the existence of life and humanity are 'just accidental,' which inevitably raises religious questions about whether the universe was planned." He plans to donate the vast majority of the prize to a handful of local religious and charitable organizations including the First Congregational Church of Berkeley and the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Inspiring life to say the least. The seemingly futile issue of reconciling science and religion is strangely reminiscent of the assumption, taught to me in my sophomore physics class at Berkeley, that is made in quantum physics that at the atomic level, all things are both particles and waves (i.e., in science speak, "simultaneously exhibiting localized and distributed properties"). The "duality principle" of quantum theory is ultimately an act of faith made by physicists since it has never been observed or proven in an experiment. Ironic that the same scientists who blast their Christian peers including Townes for their unscientific beliefs are the same ones who oftentimes make similar "leaps of faith" in science that defy observation or even logic.

Montgomery Ward Revisited

The Troutgirl blog has some amusing snipets about all things Korean: "Q: How does a Korean-American pronounce the words 'Caesar', 'seizure', and 'scissors'? A: Shija, shija, shija."; "Q: Why is Korean toilet paper wide? A: Because it's hyu-ji."; "Margaret Cho recounting a phone call from her mother in thick Korean-accented English: 'Two things. Number one, grandma-grandpa gonna die. Not today, not tomorrow -- but they gonna die. And number two, did you get da shampoo I sent you?'"; "My brother telling me about a Korean movie: 'It was the archetypal Korean movie, all about a guy who falls in love with a girl who he can't marry.' Me: 'If it was the typical Korean movie, wouldn't it be all about his parents telling him he isn't studying hard enough?' My brother: 'Of course it's about that too.'"; "My Uncle Kim asked me recently, 'So, did you see that new movie? The, the, Mattress?' I looked at him and thought for a moment. 'Oh, no-no, it's not Mattress,' I replied, 'It's Mattress Reloaded'."

Tea'd Off

Very entertaining account of a confrontation between a waiter and two patrons over some "missing" tea bags (Tea Nazi entry, link here). Tough life being a waiter in New York.

Sunday Brunch

After a long unintended drive through the City and a palpable sense that the other passengers in the car were about to incite a Bounty-like mutiny against yours truly, we stopped for brunch at a place that T and I had been wanting to try for some time, The Magic Flute (link here) in the Presidio Heights area. While the food was a tad overpriced, brunching on their elegant back patio on a warm sunny afternoon more than made up for it. The weather on this particular Sunday was spectacular. Anyhow, their chicken hash and eggs accompanied by an Arnold Palmer (iced tea with lemonade) was definitely a welcome reprieve from my extreme beef overdose from the previous evening. On Saturday night, I had downed a "Sloppy Jose" sandwich (a standard sloppy Joe but with some taco seasoning thrown into the mix) at the Peninsula Fountain & Grill in Palo Alto and quickly followed it up with some sauce-drenched roast beef sandwiches at the Menlo Park Arby's. A bit much? Thomas Jefferson once declared that a revolution every now and then is a good and necessary thing. Just replace "revolution" with "chopped beef sandwich binge" and I would agree wholeheartedly. Anyhow, I didn't have too much to fear as Stanford Hospital (link here), with its excellent cardiology department, was a stone's throw away.