20th Nov 2007
Gettysburg Address Powerpoint
Bit slow on it on O’Conall Street these days. RTE have a quirky story about yet another Internet phenomenon which has apparently passed me by.
According to RTE
“Seven score and four years ago on this date, US President Abraham Lincoln delivered what would become one of the most famous speeches in history.
His Gettysburg Address, just 272 words long, was a powerful summary of the young nation crippled by war.
Seven years ago, a man named Peter Norvig created The Gettysburg Address Powerpoint Presentation.
He posted what has now become an internet phenomenom after one too many bad presentations at a meeting in January 2000.
On his website norvig.com, he says many people get ‘frustrated at seeing too many presentations where PowerPoint or other visual aids obscure rather than enhance the point.’
His Powerpoint ‘address’ is titled ‘Gettysburg Cemetary Dedication’ and provides bullet points instead of President Lincoln’s lyrical prose”
You can make you own mind up by following this link. I have to say I think the man had a point (about PowerPoints that is, not the great speech)
Here is the full text of Lincoln’s fantastic speech:
The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
WILFING
Off now to watch Iain Stewarts new series, Volcanoes tonight. Happy days!. Also read on Yahoo news that Brian May, rock star and astrophysicist, has been appointed chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
May will be installed as the university’s figurehead leader early next year, according to the Yahoo news report. The 60-year-old Queen guitarist said the appointment was “a great honor and a great new challenge.”
He is an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University, which has a well-known astrophysics research institute. Now who says science isn’t cool.
Excellent. I have come to the conclusion that people have forgotten how to communicate! Powerpoint was perhaps the final nail in the coffin of good communication. Before that came a phenomenon called business-speak which has continued to thrive and will continue to do so no doubt, going forward! In meetings my colleagues often come out with a string of utterences (they don’t qualify as sentences or phrases) which range from padded waffle to sheer nonsense. It seems a month cannot be given without adding “timeframe”. We are told that so and so is pro-active. In other words, not lazy. Our office is littered with the ghastly sight of brain dumps and the unedifying sight of people getting a ‘heads up’. Up where? I think I know. Our local creche uses the slogan “Family Solutions”, which suggests that we have a problem. Why not just tell us they provide Child Care.
Phew, I enjoyed that little rant, great way to bring the week to an end on a Friday afternoon!