I’m noticing a pattern in coverage of Paul Ryan. Yesterday’s NYT and WaPo gripe-collecters on how conservatives wanted to “unleash” the candidate were a taster. The next wave of Ryan story is the “the wonk is loosed” piece. When you see just how the “wonkishness” is being defined, it’s fairly amusing.
One example: Former Slatester Rebecca Kaplan reports that Ryan is “letting his wonk flag fly.”
In addition to a debt clock — now a must-have prop at Republican political rallies — Ryan was flanked by two large screens that projected a favorite tool of academics and businessmen: a PowerPoint presentation.
“I’m kind of a PowerPoint guy, so I hope you’ll bear with me,” Ryan told the audience as he began clicking through four slides, which showed graphs depicting U.S. debt held by the public from 1940 to present, debt per person in the United States, percentage of debt held by foreign countries and a breakdown of federal spending. He then launched into a 10-minute monologue on the federal debt, throwing around terms such as “Congressional Budget Office” and “Treasury bills” to illustrate his point.
That’s all it takes? Four slides about the size of the debt? Wouldn’t the wonky thing here be a presentation on the debt followed by details of how Ryan will cut it back? I suppose that’s not possible, because if the Romney remix of the Ryan plan is enacted, we add to the debt by restoring $700 billion to future Medicare spending, stop most tax increases, and increase defense spending.
I had an old advisor who said that Powerpoint is for people with nice asses, since you will spend the entire class with your backside to the class when you use it. At any rate, for a party populated with people who think Jesus was riding dinosaurs 5,000 years ago, four powerpoint slides probably is wonky. And, as Paul Ryan has proven, the numbers don’t even have to make sense and be based on complete lies.
pseudonymous in nc
As fans of Edward Tufte would say, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Dr. Loveless
He does have a nice ass, though, so maybe PP works for him.
BGinCHI
Yeah, this is just like when I’m teaching Hamlet and I throw around terms like “soliloquy” and “madness.”
Hell, one time I even threw out “narcissist.”
Are reporters this fucking stupid?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
If Al Gore had done something like this…
schrodinger's cat
Using software from Microsoft Office, that any high school student can use == wonky. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. Was Pravda this bad?
flukebucket
Obama has already made an ass of Ryan once and it looks like Biden is going to get a shot at it now. But letting him make an ass of himself is really the best course of action.
Spaghetti Lee
4 Powerpoint slides! Move over, Paul Krugman!
schrodinger's cat
BTW I don’t think these stupid power point presentations are going to win over many new votes.
TribalistMeathead
It’s worse – she also defines him as “wonky” because he uses terms like “Congressional Budget Office” and “Treasury bills.” Anyone who was partially tuned into the ACA debate would’ve heard about the CBO ad nausem, and anyone who’s ever read a copy of Reader’s Digest would know about T-bills.
Violet
Old people will be impressed by PowerPoint because they don’t know how to use it. Fucking PowerPoint. How does it work?
scav
If he breaks out the power tie at the same time . . . .
and to think that only s little time ago they were playing with etch-a-sketches and whiteboards. sniff. they grow up so fast . . .
Mnemosyne
As someone said in another thread yesterday, the bar has been set so low that a turtle could step over it.
dmsilev
@BGinCHI:
Yes?
Mnemosyne
Also, too, PowerPoint sucks donkey balls. Keynote works much, much better.
Spaghetti Lee
By the way, griping conservatives: Please, do unleash Paul Ryan! Unleash him all over America! Make sure you go to every length to make Paul Ryan the most famous Republican in the country.
We liberals would really hate that. Just hate it.
dmsilev
Let me guess. He made his graphs in Excel as well.
(most graphing software packages have output with their own characteristic look and style. Excel’s is ‘butt ugly’)
Punchy
Yes, those are mighty wonky terms.
quannlace
Wow. Charts and graphs. No wonder people in their dozens are lining up to see Ryan speak.
pj
The 15 minute power point demonstration was how Ryan once led off his town hall meetings here in SE Wisc. Some constituents spent the next 45 minutes ripping his policy to shreds. That’s when Mr. Bold and Courageous switched to telephone conference town halls, where mouthy peasants can’t talk back.
dr. bloor
To use a fast-becoming-overused phrase this campaign cycle, Rep. Munster is a stupid person’s idea of what an Econ professor looks like.
YoohooCthulhu
From the article
Does anyone know what’s up with these “debt graphs”? I mean, maybe I have a weird perspective on it as a scientist, but it’s a bit absurd to extrapolate out to a scenario with monotonic trend lines when….that scenario likely won’t happen (as politicians will be forced to do something about it), and it’s way beyond the reasonable certain bounds of your model/prediction. I’ve sort of always seen them as a blatant scare tactic.
It’s sort of like finding a virus with 30% mortality and extrapolating out to a scenario where it kills everyone in the US. Sure it could happen, but other things are more likely to intervene in the meantime.
Warren Terra
I hate the way people use the word “PowerPoint”, which happens to be the name of a perfectly acceptable piece of software that is used to display slides to an audience, a practice followed by many of the sharpest minds and most engaging speakers, as some sort of shorthand for “antisocial nitwit who mumbles to the projection screen while waving their laser pointer haphazardly and ineffectually at images crammed with poorly thought-out diagrams and misleading figures or too much text, interspersed with dumb animations and overlaid over dumber backgrounds.”
I use PowerPoint, because when I give talks I need to show slides. Needing to show slides doesn’t automatically transform me into a bumbling jackass at the lectern, nor does it reduce my mental capacity when I make my slides. I’m not exactly Demosthenes, but I get the job done, and I do it using available software to display my slides, which usually means PowerPoint. People using the name of the software to denote idiocy might as well blame LCD projectors, or lecterns.
Bulworth
An apt symbol of this focus-challenged campaign. ‘The problem’s the economy’. And ‘unemployment’. Hey, look over there, Obama is saying ‘bumps in the road’. Haha. Terrorist attack. Debt. Economy. ‘Let them have emergency rooms’. Taxes are too high and there are too many taxes and 47% of Americans are freeloaders who don’t pay taxes.
David Hunt
@BGinCHI:
Yes.
SATSQ
ETA: dmsilev beat me to it.
Ripley
I hope Paul Ryan is ready for that 3AM phone call from the Nobel Prize Committee, telling him he’s won the Nobel Prize for Presentations.
gbear
OT, but as long as we’re mentioning Jesus riding on dinosarus, I had lunch today at a fast food place not to be named along I-94 as it heads east out of St. Paul towards Wisconsin. Above the restaurant was a billboard saying I should visit the Creation Museum just 680-some miles ahead in Cincinatti, OH. Of course they gave a web address becuause no one is going to see that billboard and say ‘Hey! Let’s go!’. Googled the museum and I’m not clicking on the link. Jesusland stuff.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Powerpoint is the lowest common denominator of information exchange. Even Facebook posts are more informative and accurate.
Serious wonk guy is not serious.
Roger Moore
Can I be the first to link to Tufte’s classic destruction of PowerPoint? Just remember “There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list!”
Warren Terra
@Ripley:
Well, the prizes are given out starting in just under a fortnight. There isn’t a Prize in Presentations, but then there isn’t supposed to be a Prize in Economics, either – a bunch of rich bankers funded it and hijacked the Nobel name. May I point out, Paul Ryan has a lot of friends who are rich bankers.
BGinCHI
@Warren Terra: Lighten up, Demosthenes.
Xecky Gilchrist
@dr. bloor: To use a fast-becoming-overused phrase this campaign cycle
Thank you for saving me from overusing it yet again! ;)
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: In Soviet Russia, bullet list you.
cathyx
Since Ryan only appeals to old people, a powerpoint presentation will look futuristic and “Congressional Budget Office” and “Treasury bills” will look like big important words.
joes527
Let’s just call the election. When a vice presidential candidate openly admits that he is the kind of guy who couldn’t find his ass with both hands … it is just beyond embarrassing.
Soonergrunt
As I’m sure you’ve all heard or read the anecdotes, the Army lurves them some PowerPoint.
I’ve seen junior officers slaving away for hours on their slides, and not actually accomplishing anything–which when you consider that they were junior officers, was probably safer for everyone involved, but I digress.
So the Army (and all the services, really) do so love their .ppt files. It’s bad. It’s soul-sucking. And it very rarely conveys useful information.
I had a Colonel once who limited the use of PowerPoint in the briefings. He did it by restricting new briefers (VERY junior officers) to ONE slide. His theory was that if you can’t effectively communicate the essentials on one slide with three bullet points and be able to answer follow up questions, you had no business using PowerPoint to conduct briefings.
Warren Terra
@gbear:
I realize my sense of scale is skewed from a mostly urban upbringing, but who sees a billboard saying “just 12 hours of driving (with pit stops included) and you could be at our crappy theme park!” and hops behind the wheel?
jibeaux
@gbear: Read scalzi’s account of it.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@BGinCHI: I know three. Two of them are women and are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
They’re both now unemployed. For good, at least in that industry.
The other is a man who is not that smart, thinks both sides do it, and married rich (it’s not the Mustache of Understanding, just so we’re clear!)
He’s in his mid 70s and still employed.
The media does not want intelligent reporting. In cold fact, they’re fighting it tooth and nail.
Davebo
Power Point is for people who have nothing to say
Great story though.
BGinCHI
@Warren Terra: The Griswold family?
Ash Can
@Dr. Loveless: If his body fat is anywhere near where he claims it is, boyo ain’t got no ass.
ranchandsyrup
Clap Louder!
Napoleon
@gbear:
I noticed one in Cleveland a few days ago.
BGinCHI
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Finally “Anchorman” moves from fiction to reality. I knew it would happen.
MattR
Not quite on topic, but Wisconsin related – Interesting to see Gov Scott Walker become a fan of unions once it affected him (and not even in a truly significant way). He tweeted – “After catching a few hours of sleep, the #Packers game is still just as painful. #Returntherealrefs”
eemom
splendiforous post title, Cole.
Oh-way-oh.
Cacti
Paulie has definitely wrested the title away from Gnewt of…
“A stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.”
At least perfesser Gingrich had a doctoral degree. Paulie has a bachelor’s in political science.
Paul is the teenager who never grew up to realize that Ayn Rand is a philosophy for disaffected teenagers.
bookdragon
@Warren Terra: I use PowerPoint too, because I sometimes have to and it does make decent presentations.
The comments come from the fact that the article makes the very use of this software evidence of wonkiness. It’s like a Dilbert strip:
http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/40000/3000/500/43544/43544.strip.gif
Only pointy-hair types view ppt slides this way.
Violet
Disappointed Dad is very sorry you let him down by electing Republicans who run up the national debt. He’s going to make sure you learn your lesson by having you vote Republican in this election.
yopd1
I’m really enjoying the GOP discussing how Ryan will kick Biden’s butt in the debates. This is the man who killed Giuliani’s presidential race with one sentence.
We can only hope that Ryan goes rogue against Biden.
Dr. Squid
I would like to add that the title of this post is worthy of TBogg.
gbear
@Warren Terra: The billboard was designed to appeal to a child’s interest in dinosaurs (Really. the graphic for the billboard was a large cartoonish dinosaur). The website was in large letters and I think they’re just hoping kids will visit the site and a) realize everything they’ve been taught is a lie, b) find Jesus. It was totally bizarre to think that someone would actually drive there. I’ll bet $10,000 it was a Clearchannel billboard too.
Keith
Anyone else notice that he’s doing the Ross Perot schtick (right down to using out-of-date presentation tools to show his visuals)?
stratplayer
@Mnemosyne:
Keynote may work better than PowerPoint for making slide shows, but slide shows themselves suck donkey balls.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Soonergrunt: I worked with the Navy end of things, with occasional forays into the FBI world.
Every word you said is true, but let me add a couple of observations:
1. Military powerpoints are just stupid. Never run into one that conveyed any useful information whatsoever. Also, they are guilty of the most appalling use of clip art ever witnessed by man.
2. Law enforcement powerpoints are visually much better, but they’ll take forty slides to convey information that could have been conveyed on a single slide. If you go to a LE conference, you better bring a gallon of Starbucks or some other form of stimulant, you’re going to sleep otherwise.
Power Point can be used well, just like television. The problem is that neither medium ever does get used properly.
Xecky Gilchrist
@jibeaux: Read scalzi’s account of it.
THANK YOU! For reminding me who wrote that. It was and is a masterpiece.
Ash Can
Poor Paulie — whatever will he do without his snazzy visual aids when he debates Joe Biden?
Dr. Squid
@Cacti:
Which would also explain a shut-in like Grover Norquist.
jrg
Anyone dumb enough to think we’ll see another “debt clock” in less than 8 years if R/R is elected deserves to get kicked in the balls.
…Hard and repeatedly, so as to prevent further pollution of the gene pool.
Look at us! We’re fiscally responsible! Whee! Now, let’s cut taxes and invade Iran.
Schlemizel
Anyone who has had to sit through the Amway scam presentation has seen powerpoint slides quite nicely use median, mean and unrelated statistics mashed together to produce a single set of lies out of a series of facts.
My guess is this works on a set of innumerate people that make up the base of the modern GOP.
Cacti
@yopd1:
Joe’s hands were tied with Palin, because he couldn’t look like he was “beating up on a girl”. Ryan’s going to get bent over the VPOTUS’s knee a la Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen.
Also too, is it just me, or does Paul Ryan look like the kind of guy who would cry if you punched him hard enough?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@BGinCHI: Funny you should mention that. All three are from San Diego.
Soonergrunt
@Warren Terra: I’m sure you’re an ace with the ppt. Most people are NOT. And there’s a very good reason that PowerPoint denotes a poor instructor. Because the vast majority of people who use PowerPoint use it as a crutch, copying and pasting everything from a word document onto their slides and then reading the slide in a dull monotone. They spend so much time building their slides that they don’t practice the actual presentation.
Those (among whom I’m sure you are) who use PowerPoint as an adjunct, to deliver some visual information with the lecture are truly wonderful people. God’s chosen, as it were.
But the vast majority of people who use PowerPoint end up using it as a replacement for actually knowing and mastering their subject. Or worse, they use the striking visuals and do-dads to hide information or confuse the audience,intentionally.
If you can give your presentation without PowerPoint and the majority of your audience gets your information, you’re doing it right.
In the example I gave earlier, PowerPoint is almost crippling good staff work on which combat success depends. You can lose whether you have good staff or not, but winning is very tough without good staff work. So the rule that some military training programs is this–if you can’t present without electricity, then you can’t present at all.
Roy G.
“There are many true statements about complex topics that are too long to fit on a PowerPoint slide.” -Edward Tufte
Man, that Edward Tufte is shrill. He must be a librul.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti:
Uh, from Tulane. I think that means it has an asterisk.
Cacti
@jrg:
Huge tax cuts at the top + hikes in defense spending. That was the Reagan formula that grew the national debt by 189% in 8 years.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Mnemosyne: The tool’s not the problem. Whether you give a monkey a circular saw and a rattail file, or a Fodor CNC machine, you’re not getting a Shaker table out of either one so long as the monkey is driving.
weaselone
@Mnemosyne:
The bar has been set just low enough to prevent slugs from getting under it.
dr. bloor
@yopd1:
Oh, I’d like that.
“Mind if I call you ‘Joe’?”
“Depends. Mind if I call you ‘Sociopathic Chum Bucket’?”
Dr. Squid
@Warren Terra: Ask people who go to Wall Drug or Rock City.
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Even at that, PhD from Tulane > B.A. from Miami of Ohio
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Pappy Carlson? Nah. He doesn’t think both sides do it.
Culture of Truth
Your use of terms like “Congressional Budget Office” and “Treasury bills” frighten and confuse me, but then, I’m just a caveman, I don’t understand the little creatues inside this magic box… but although I have been recently unfrozen… I do know this, the Ryan plan does not add up.
General Stuck
The only pattern I’m noticing is spastic batshit crazy from all concerned in crackerville. Every now and then a brave gooper raises his head to say ‘wtf’ and is swiftly clocked into the wingnut hurt locker.
They are campaigning for some futuristic election campaign, when the nation is fully addicted to gladiator fighting to the death with Calvin Ball rules, with no mercy and weapons of choice.
Then they will sound like compassionate conservatives willing to pony up vouchers to keep granny out of the ring, for a little while longer. Long as she has matching funds and is willing to vote republican till the end arrives.
scav
Tangential at best, but one of my favorite conference events was watching an oldish mathematical geographer type pull off a talk with about 20 wobbly old-guy hand-written slides full of equations never once removing a slide from the projector.
yopd1
@Cacti: I was going back through videos of the 2008 Democratic Primary debates and really appreciating Biden even more. He may make gaffes, but he is quick witted and fast on his feet. Many of his answers during the debates were classics.
Besides the fact I could never imagine a turd like Ryan having the ability to make a speech like this.
Violet
@Cacti:
No, he looks like the guy who would agree to meet after school to fight and then tell the principal a fight was going to happen and get the other kids in trouble. And if he got caught off guard with a punch, he’d put those excellent sub-three-minute marathon skills to good use and run away. And then tell the principal.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: True, that (although blockquote fail.)
Anya
@Soonergrunt: I was asked recently to use a power point in a job interview. I was like, WTF! But did it anyway. I ended up not taking the job because they were insane. I guess the use of PowerPoint is spreading like wild fire.
cckids
@Cacti: Ryan looks like the guy who’d cry if you insulted him with the truth – about his marathon time, body fat percentage, whatever. A real, in-your-face putdown would have him sobbing.
Or a girly slap, too. He just comes across as a self-absorbed wuss.
Mike in NC
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I seem to recall reading that during the early stages of the Iraq invasion, SECDEF Rumsfeld used PowerPoint slides that featured quotes from the Bible when briefing Dubya.
Soonergrunt
@Cacti: “Joe’s hands were tied with Palin, because he couldn’t look like he was ‘beating up on a girl’.”
And he still slaughtered her.
gogol's wife
@cathyx:
Yes, indeed, all old people are gullible and stupid. You’ll be one some day and you’ll see.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Soonergrunt:
Problem is, the fad then became the “quad chart” (ie four little slides, arranged four to a page on a single page in tiny font). Still one slide, right?
Last month, I had a manager ask us to each make a ‘quint chart’. The template he sent out had a nice light blue “Executive Summary” Oval in the center.
Gods help us should these guys discover fractals…
yopd1
@cathyx: If his appeal is to old people why did he get booed by the AARP and Romney’s lead in the over 60 crowd has dwindled from 20% to 4%?
Zifnab
@Cacti:
I don’t know about that. He strikes me more as a guy that would cry if his eggs were a bit runny or his new Mercedes got a ding in it.
If you punched him, I’m thinking he’d more likely scream like a banshee and start slapping at you.
Cacti
@Violet:
Sarah Palin ran a faster marathon than Paul Ryan.
But the really embarrassing part is Paulie was 20 years old when he ran his. Palin was 41.
ksmiami
@ranchandsyrup: I whizzed by your comment and did a double take since i thought you wrote “crap louder” … a perfect summary of Ryan/Romney12
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Soonergrunt: The Wink was such a great moment in wingnuttery and epistemic closure. She and her fellow travellers, from Rich Lowry to Laura Ingram, thought she’d just sealed the deal for her ticket, but even the indie mouth breathers just looked and thought, oh, bless her heart, and made up their minds to vote for the black guy.
Frankensteinbeck
@Warren Terra:
And synergy is a very useful concept indeed, but then morons started using it to pretend they knew what they were doing.
Turgidson
@Cacti:
And “learned” whatever it is he thinks he knows about economics from Atlas fucking Shrugged.
Bring on the meteor.
cckids
@Soonergrunt: But, but WINKS!! Zingers!! Sarah!! totally RULED.
snark off.
cathyx
@gogol’s wife: I should have qualified that with old republicans.
@yopd1: I should have qualified that with old republicans.
trollhattan
@Soonergrunt:
In what sense, Charlie?
I’m expecting Willard to “go-Sarah” & ask and answer his own talking points.
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah.
FYWP wouldn’t let me edit.
Another Halocene Human
@Warren Terra:
In the sciences the old projectors with handmade slides were better fucking presentations than PP, which is more geared towards “executive summaries” and PHBs.
I noticed a definite dumbing down when PP arrived in my field.
YMMV.
Ash Can
@Cacti:
Hell, he looks like he’d cry if you looked at him funny.
Another Halocene Human
@gbear: Creation museum–your tax dollars at work!
Local tax dollars, but still!
Napoleon
@Cacti:
I read that Harry Reid has a better time as well.
Hill Dweller
OT: PPP has Tammy Duckworth up 14 on Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh in IL-8.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
PowerPoint? Really? I can’t tell you how many incredibly boring and incorrectly made slide presentations I have had to sit through in my life. PowerPoint is only as good as the person putting the presentation together. 99.9% of people use it wrong and it drives me to distraction. Plus, Cole’s point…if you’re looking at the slide you’re not looking at the audience…you are NOT engaging them.
Another Halocene Human
@Soonergrunt: Having a relative work in defense work, I heard some devastating stories about the use of PPT.
Which would probably be illegal to recount, but…
Let’s just say there was Dilbert-level stupid involved. And PPT put jet engines on it. Going the wrong way, very, very fast!
Roger Moore
@Warren Terra:
Those billboards are targeting people who are already on the road in that direction. Bill Bryson gives a classic description of how those things work in I’m a Stranger Here, Myself. The idea is to attract families who are on long car trips. They have billboards starting hundreds of miles from the attraction with overstated descriptions of how great the place will be to visit. Kids are supposed to see the signs and start anticipating how great the place is going to be long before the family gets there. That gives them hours and hours to work on their parents and convince them that they absolutely have to stop and see the attraction.
Warren Terra
@Another Halocene Human:
I’m also in the sciences, and old enough to have encountered the transition. The fact that you can get your slides instantly instead of using the slide printer and sending the film off to get developed has been a godsend, and the same people who gave good or bad talks with 35mm slides now give good or bad talks with LCD projectors.
Ash Can
@trollhattan:
I think there’s more than a zero chance that he’ll do this to some extent. The difference, though, is that instead of being a fresh and appealing face and unknown quantity running on the ticket of someone well-liked by the press corps, Romney will be doing this to people whose faces he’s slammed doors in early and often on the campaign trail. If he happens to do this to someone he or his press secretary pissed on in Europe, or a buddy of one of the pissees, he may get a little more than a funny look from Gwen Ifill in return.
Joel
Powerpoints are essential for scientific data — there’s no way around it. Completely useless, I imagine, for business presentations, however.
Spike
This thread needs moar Gettysburg Address — PowerPoint style.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@gbear: If you haven’t yet seen Scalzi’s Creation Museum trip report, you really should check it out.
Culture of Truth
before we had Hitler Reacts To, we had PowerPoint Spoofs. You kids don’t know how good you have it.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@cathyx: I was leaving Costco yesterday and wound up behind a vehicle with Obama stickers and the other usual liberal slogans plastered all over it. Nice car, Benz or something like that.
I fucking hate bumperstickers of any variety.
Anyhow, I pull up besides, expecting to see the usual neckbearded OWS type, or the dried-out Starbucks-swilling Marin bitch type of driver. To my shock I saw a VERY old man, hearing aids on both ears and trifocals, and his WWII Navy hat on.
That’s one old guy that Ryan doesn’t appeal to. He doesn’t remember the Depression, he lived it.
AA+ Bonds
In my business communications class I learned that thanks to the influence of private equity on the rest of business and its figures not wanting to make time to read things before cutting out to play golf with clients, the future of both public- and private-sector documents is the “pitch book” which has come to dominate PE
A “pitch book”, unlike what you might assume from the name, describes a full-color landscape-oriented printed-out PowerPoint with slightly more bullet points per page than normal on any topic, ‘pitch’ or otherwise
This, my class was told, looks to replace all word-processor documents in the near future
Tufte can only do so much when the agenda is set by people who hate to read something one-twentieth the length of his books, and about their own business, because it’s “too long” and they’re “busy people” who want you to “get to the point”
raven
@Warren Terra: People grab on to some idea and just run with it. I get the same shit from hippie-dippy friends about computers.
Warren Terra
@AA+ Bonds:
A nightmare vision. But it’s the fault of idiots, not of slideshow software.
BGinCHI
@Hill Dweller: Fuck yeah.
Best news I’ve had all day.
AA+ Bonds
@Warren Terra:
Hey you will not hear me knocking projectors – they are good for slides in the old style where the context is provided by a speaker and/or document but it helps to let the whole room look at an image while the speaker describes it at length
That is, if the “gist” of your presentation or even a fundamental understanding of it can be gained from sifting through the slides, your presentation is probably worse than nothing at all because it oversimplifies a topic that merits a presentation, and should never have been given in the first place
If you can avoid that with PowerPoint more power to you but you’re fighting uphill against the software and the expectations everyone has for its products – your presentation will be considered a “bad PowerPoint” by most people in business
The issue with PowerPoint has always been the culture as formed around the guidelines defined by the tool’s suggested templates and technical carrots and sticks (such as its sizing and now forced resizing of text to conform to so many bullet points per slide) – that’s a key part of Tufte’s argument
trollhattan
@Ash Can:
Ooh, what if they substituted Queen Latifah for Gwen Ifill for the actual debate? Think Willard would notice? (Note, the second question is redundant because we already know the answer.)
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/vp-debate-open-palin–biden/1357953/
Mnemosyne
@stratplayer:
Depends on what your presentation is about. We do a lot of Keynotes at my work, but what we’re talking about is the artwork in our collection, and it would be one hell of a dull presentation if we talked about all of this great artwork that we’re putting into museum exhibitions but never actually show any of it.
I will freely admit to being an Apple fangirl, but Steve Jobs really was the past master of doing slideshows. Watch one of them on YouTube sometime and you’ll see that what he did was use images to illustrate and focus on what he was talking about rather than letting the slides substitute for the talk, which is what most people do when you let them loose in Keynote or PowerPoint.
Hob
@Warren Terra: Sure, you can use PP well – and many of the people who use it horribly would probably be just as bad with other media. But its bad rap isn’t unfair.
1. It has a design & feature set that actively encourage bad practices, which people with no other experience then internalize and teach each other as “how presentations are done”. That part really is Microsoft’s fault. They made a product that not only makes it easy to use stupid layouts and pointless animations, but actually makes it hard not to use them.
2. An awful business culture has accreted around PP like a pearl made of shit, and has escaped from the boardroom to pollute other areas of life, especially education. This part isn’t inherent to the product, it could’ve theoretically happened with some other tool, but this is what did happen and it’s become a significant malign influence. Arguing that you shouldn’t call this phenomenon “PowerPoint” but rather “improper use of PowerPoint with poor design choices” may be logical, but only in the same sense as arguing that you shouldn’t call Republicans “conservatives” because they’re not good at conserving things.
ericblair
@Warren Terra:
Yes, thanks. The weird mumbling dude reading off his poorly-made PowerPoint slides isn’t going to suddenly turn in a St Crispin’s Day-esque barnburner if you take his laptop away. The tool is a pain in the ass to use and encourages people to piss away all sorts of time making “pretty” slides that eat bandwidth, but the central problem is the presenter.
I’ve read a fair bit of Tufte’s stuff, but it seems to boil down to the fact that a well-written, clear, objective technical report is better than a poorly-written, unclear, biased PowerPoint. Um, OK. Yes, it’s easy to generate crappy slides, but it’s also easy to write crappy documents and he seems to slide right over that.
LanceThruster
For the level of MLM snake oil Ayn Ryan is pushing, he’d do well with a white board and a giant sketch pad on an easel so he can draw multiple dollar signs and then endlessly circle them the ramp up the excitement.
Wonk-a-rrific!
presquevu
I’m a PowerPoint guy – two-dimensional, and fatally lacking in nuance. Maybe we can find the fairy godmother that made Paul a real boy and get her to turn him back into ClipArt.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
A few years ago, I sat in on (and helped grade) the final presentations for a civil engineering class. The presentations were, of course, PowerPoint.
My number one criticism was of the professor, who neglected to tell the students that they were the only ones who hadn’t seen the animated text effects many, many times before.
chopper
whoa, slow down, egghead!
Chyron HR
@Hill Dweller:
You must be mistaken, because last night several distinuished posters explained that Duckworth has girl cooties and therefore cannot into elections.
(Liz Warren also, too.)
Hob
Funny time capsule moment: I was recently rewatching The X Files, and there’s an episode (“Monday”) where Scully is stuck in a very boring FBI planning meeting. They did a good job giving the guy boring things to talk about, but what struck me was that he wasn’t using slides at all– he had a little stand-up chart, Ross Perot style, that he occasionally gestured to, but mostly he was either reading from his notes or speaking extemporaneously. At no point did he just repeat words that were already visible in a bullet point. So the effect of the scene for me was the opposite of what they intended: I wanted to be in that meeting, because it’s been years since I’ve seen anyone actually make the effort to present that way.
Btw, the cutesy tool of choice at my job is no longer Powerpoint, it’s prezi.com. I wish I would never see another goddamn swooping zooming bullet point container in my life, but that wish is in vain as long as my life lasts longer than one day.
Chris
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
From Scalzi –
I remember a fundiegelical on facebook arguing that if you couldn’t use the Bible to justify belief in the Bible, then you shouldn’t be able to use reason and logic to justify your confidence in the value of reason and logic, either.
Both sides do it! Fairness and balance! Etc.
I love how they suddenly whine about the need for tolerance of other points of view when they find themselves completely at a loss for facts. Seriously, how many other contexts can you imagine where conservatives are all about “presenting the two theories side by side as equally valid,” as opposed to just “Go us! Fuck you!”
Bill in Section 147
Oh boy Powerpoint. For most presentations the focus is on impact not content. Maybe someone should put together a Powerpoint presentation which defines “wonk” for the Kaplan.
Because color, by its nature, is wonky. Also too a dimensional shiny graphic is proof of sincerity.
I wouldn’t have spent all that time making it pretty if it wasn’t true.
Mnemosyne
@Warren Terra:
I’ve used both PowerPoint and Keynote.
I stand by my statement that PowerPoint, in and of itself as a program, sucks donkey balls. Once you use Keynote instead, you’ll never go back.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I haven’t created a Powerpoint in 15 years. I have grown to like a new type of presentation called Prezi. Check it out if you’re looking at new ways to present shit.
AA+ Bonds
Here is a Goldman Sachs pitch book on the sub-prime mortgage CDOs that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs sold through swindling and lying to investors, if you want to see how Satan reigns on Earth through the method I just described
It is a secondary but important issue to me with the CDOs and how they were treated internally/externally that this presentation alternates between dumb-as-rocks no-sentence bullet trees that say nothing on the one hand, and impenetrable diagrams that force rotation of the page and tiny-text disclaimers on the other
This is from all the way back in the horse-and-carriage days of 2007 and I doubt their pitch books look nearly this dense nowadays – information is the enemy
Hob
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Pretty funny that you posted that at the same moment that I was posting how much I hate Prezi.
AA+ Bonds
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Prezi has brought back dynamic transitions (‘swooping’ text, fast zooms into unrecognizable on-page images, etc.) into my work life through the magic of “this is something that is not called PowerPoint so all the old problems are new solutions” so really, fuck Prezi
DPS
I’ve been using PPT in my lectures for a few years now. I thought I would hate it, but it’s actually very helpful, or at least the ways that I have used it have been very helpful. My students retain more of what I say, take better notes, and above all are much better able to follow what I’m saying.
Joel
@ericblair: I will add, that having seen weird mumbling dudes present overhead projector presentations, Powerpoint is a huge advance and timesaver for everyone involved.
Hob
@ericblair: No, that’s not a fair summary of Tufte. He’s been quite explicit about acknowledging that you can make terrible documents with all kinds of tools. But the specific design & feature set of PP strongly encourages the making of certain kinds of terrible documents, and it’s been so widely distributed that people now think those are good things and will actually criticize you if you don’t do things that way.
The Dangerman
Wonk? Or wank? Maybe it’s wank over the wonk?
Or maybe it’s Squonk (“but if you don’t stand up, you don’t stand a chance”)
/genesis fan
AA+ Bonds
@Chris:
Certain folks have attempted to elevate this into a theological position they call “presuppositionalism” – as someone who has a lot of respect for medieval theology as the cradle of reason in the West, I consider this a sort of anti-theology
Seanly
@Warren Terra:
Word.
PowerPoint is just another tool. I always go by the rule I was taught – no more than 5 bullets or lines with no more than 6 words in each. Don’t type in exactly what you’re going to say!
Hideous & unreadable slides don’t care how you make them.
Terrible presenters will bore & destroy audiences no matter what they use. If you doubt that, attend some engineering classes at your local university. My favorite from my undergrad days was the instructor for engineering econ – he had his 20 year-old lecture notes on one long roll to go on the overhead projector. He had his turning of the crank matched to his bored droning. He ignored questions as it’d throw him off.
Maude
There have always been jokes about slide. The main one being about people who want to show you their latest vacation slides.
Jackie Mason, way, way back about the time people were riding dinosaurs, used to have a comedy routing where he used a clicker and described the non existent slides. He had a dead pan voice. He used to be on Ed Sullivan.
aimai
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
My 80 year old parents are staunch Dems. Hell, my 95 year old neighbor has been voting dem since FDR. Its the quislings between 60-70 that you have to worry about.
aimai
stickler
Yeah, before everyone rags on PowerPoint (deserved though it may be), let’s remember that — despite Microsoft’s efforts to make crap rise to the top through crap design — PowerPoint isn’t a whole lot worse than every other technology out there. It enables mediocrity, no question. Turbocharges it.
But let’s all be honest here. You can dull the mind and confuse the crowd with crappy Mimeograph pages. You can, as a professor, draw a class to sleep trying to explain the importance of the flying buttress while scrawling on the chalkboard with a stub of chalk so small your fingernails provide a most unwelcome accompaniment. You can doodle on the overhead film projector and swipe your sleeve across the dry erase ink so nobody has any idea what you were trying to get across.
PowerPoint sucks. It’s also ubiquitous. I guarantee that there are men and women alive today who could make KeyNote presentations which would make you want to swallow a sword. It is the human condition.
ericblair
@Hob:
Well, as the consumer and author of quite enough technical reports, I think he’s understating that problem just a bit. I agree that Powerpoint encourages the use of structures that are often inappropriate, but if you tell the bozo who does this in PowerPoint to do it in Word, do you think he’ll suddenly structure the document properly? Or will he just make a hash of that, too? And if he’s taking out the qualifications and caveats from the PowerPoint, why do you think that they’ll appear in the report?
If you want to haul everyone who has to write or present into some decent classes to give them some clue as to what they’re doing, and force organizations to actually think through what the purpose and uses of these documents are, you will have absolutely no bitching from me. That would be better than concentrating on the annoying tool.
GxB
Ah, PowerPointless, so many memories… most of them incoherent. In fairness, it does get most of its bad rep from the fact that it is so powerful. It’s like giving rocket launchers to gibbons, or website builders to republicans. Bad results can and do occur.
Though an acquired taste for those of you outside academia, here is the best PowerPoint presentation ever. Give it a moment to get going, but I assure those with low-brow humor he fvcks that chicken right to the end.
Brachiator
@stickler:
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. As another poster noted, Powerpoint is just a tool. If you can’t convey useful information in an interesting manner, it really doesn’t matter what tool you use.
@Hob:
Disagree here. Most people are not terribly creative. PP just gives them another way to display their inadequacy.
James E. Powell
@Cacti:
I don’t expect Biden to beat up on Ryan. I expect him to ridicule as the poser that he is.
Ryan is a type. He’s the guy that’s been a great success at several multi-level marketing programs. He doesn’t do them anymore, but they were great, super, outstanding.
That kind of person cannot function in the presence of opposing views. He cannot respond to a pointed question and will not be able to handle follow-up questioning when his answers are non-responsive.
johnny aquitard
It’s like these morons have mistaken a shiny faucet for the nation’s entire water supply system.
JPL
How about a trickle down flow chart.
edited for clarity..
Gindy53
@gbear: They had a couple of dinosaur billboards down here in Indiana but the wind came along and blew them down. They never bothered to replace the “museum” ad.
We drive by the stupid thing on our way the Cincinnati airport (actually in KY) and flip it off every time. It has a rusty, metal stegosaurus or brontosaurus outside facing the freeway. Crosses too, I think. The parking lot always looks full, but I think they pay some car dealership some cash to park new cars there or maybe used ones. I never see anyone there nor know of anyone who has ever gone.
trollhattan
@James E. Powell:
Ryan reminds me of the motor-mouths in high school debate. And I think that’s how Biden should frame his debate tactics–because once he’s off his index cards he’ll likewise go off the rails.
Of course, he’ll also, too, make stuff up on the fly.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@AA+ Bonds: I am able to use it to entertain young students. That’s why I like it.
johnny aquitard
@BGinCHI:
“Good evening, this is Coopered Anderson and I am reporting here live with Blert Ferbstain, Republican congressman and chairman for Council For Real American Growth….Congressman, can you tell us, are reporters this fucking stupid?”
“Absolutely not. It’s just another democrat handout bow-and-scrape apology for insulting our Real Americans.”
“Thank you Congressman Ferbstain. And with me here also is Democratic activist and spokeperson for Obama Unicorn Unlimited, Jilly Chiliblain. Ms. Chiliblain, what’s your take on this? Are reporters this fucking stupid?”
“Why yes, yes they are. Case in point.”
“And there you go. She says yes, he says no! And now back to you, BGinCHI”.
LanceThruster
@GxB:
xD
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
It could be the TV guide blurb to any generic sitcom.
Ricky gives rocket launchers to gibbons.
Hilarity ensues.
danielx
@BGinCHI:
Yes.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
In other news…
Todd Akin affirms that he is staying in the Missouri Senate race – and is it just me, or does that sumbitch appear to be dumber than a sack of hammers? I already knew he was stupid, but he looks like he needs to be watered twice a day.
Oh yes, and David Brooks writes a column in which he discusses the problems of the conservative movement and somehow never mentions any of the following: culture wars, fundamentalism, racism, denial of science and reality, Limbaugh, Rove, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, Rove, etc etc.
Must have slipped his mind, along with his aiding and abetting the Republican Party’s long slide into insanity.
danielx
@JPL:
You don’t need a flow chart to understand the trickle down theory. It’s the warm feeling you get from having our Galtian overlords piss down your back and tell you it’s raining.
jl
No time to find it now, but I posted it once, and it’s easy to find (Edit on youtube). Watch the interview Ryan did with Brit Hume for Fox. Ryan started melting down a third of the way through, and parts of interview Lyin’ Ryan was playing the part of Deer In Headlights.
If that Fox interview Ryan was the real Ryan, the veep debate will not be Ryan mopping floor with Biden.
I think Obama vs. Ryan and Biden vs. Mitt would be a better match up in terms of personality and to put Dems at best advantage. Watching those two match ups would be a blast. If Ryan melts down and starts stammering helplessly (which I am not predicting, but may happen) then Biden will have to watch that Ryan does not get sympathy points.
But, maybe wingers can switch positions on the GOP ticket to get the dream ‘choice’ election they have been hungering for. A boy can dream, eh?
Brachiator
Just as a lot of the conventional reporting about the presidential campaign compares it to a horse race, a lot of stuff about the debates insists on a boxing match, with speculation about both speakers slugging it out and wonder whether anyone will deliver a knockout punch.
Dumbass debaters either focus too much on their opponents, or insist on keeping to a message no matter what question is asked, with a few barbs thrown at the other speaker.
But Biden has been on fire lately, and I hope that Obama was cribbing notes from Clinton’s magnificent speech at the DNC.
The idea, very tough to do, is to answer the damn questions and bounce off the opponent to communicate to the viewers, the voters. Not the press.
And to make Romney and Ryan feel in their bones, “shit, you’re right. Hell, even I should be voting for you.”
And yeah, as far as knockout punches go, it would be good if Obama demolishes all of Mitten’s positions and pretentions in the first debate, getting voters to see again what Romney has already revealed about himself, that he’s got no ideas and detests the average guy who doesn’t have an income of at least $250,000.
Mike G
Methinks he misplaced the slide showing the fat percentage of the debt that was run up under Reagan, Bush I and Bush the Stupider.
jl
@Brachiator:
I think Biden has to keep his own arrogance in check. If he was going against Rudy, Biden could unleash his inner arrogant jackass. But I think that would not work well with Ryan.
I hope Biden is asking himself what would Obama (or B Clinton) do in his veep debate. I don’t think Biden can unleash the ‘Secty of ‘splainin’ stuff like Clinton, or even Obama, but he can reason on his feet and count, which from what I have seen puts him over Ryan. Biden excels at earnestly explaining what the abstractions mean to the average person, and if he can stay in that mode, he will do damage if he can pin Ryan down on what his libertarian plans really are.
And I hope Obama is thinking about when he should loosen up a little, Biden style, and tell us what he really thinks, (at certain critical points in debate) when he goes up against Mitt.
Edit: And from my stump speech listening tour on youtube, I think Obama and Biden are collaborating closely on their speeches. So I hope that ups Biden’s focus and discipline for the veep debate.
burnspbesq
PowerPoint is the greatest impediment to effective communication ever devised by man. Gates, Ballmer, and anyone who ever worked on it are going to Hell.
jl
@burnspbesq:
Those bullets points are aimed at your brain, folks. Duck!
Actually, where I teach, the system and convention is that ppt is used for lecture slides.
Ppt itself is just a tool, and can be used for good or evil. The trick is not to rely on it solely.
My approach is to embed other software presentation devices into the ppt slides. And, refuse to lecture in a room where a black or white board and writing utensils not available.
The true evil is in the intentions of MS, since IMHO, each new version of ppt makes it harder to mix in the best tools to use for a presentation, and forces you to use canned standardized junky stuff. That is evil, dude, evil.
JustRuss
@jl:
Totally agree. Biden could play the genial elder statesman to Romney’s priveleged CEO and eat him alive, and no one would blink. He can’t get too tough on Pretty Boy, or folks will start feeling sorry for blue eyes.
But Obama could totally out-wonk Ryan, and the despair in his eyes as Obama deflected his attacks with one hand tied behind his back would be a thing of beauty. And everyone outside the 27% would see Ryan for the empty suit that he is.
LD50
When they call PowerPoint slides ‘wonky’, they’re talking to the old white teabagger crowd. You know, the kind of people who ask the salesman “does this computer have the internet on it?”
JR in WV
I used PPT quite a bit, but we embedded system screens and data structures in the slides, along with pages of bullet points about data edit requirements. Since all the requirements were known to most of the audience, they understood what we were doing, mostly.
We also always kept our back to the screen and discussed the substance in the abstract, as opposed to reading slides, which is totally boring and sleepwalking inducing. We passed out copies of all the screens, too, for people to take notes on, and much more material was presented than was on the PPT screens.
Ryan uses 4 slides to pretend he’s a wonk? That’s funny.
Robert Waldmann
I use powerpoint when I teach.
Are you suggesting I like showing off my ass ?
Persia
@Dr. Loveless: It’s certainly preferable to his face.
Recall
Biden should beat the crap out of Ryan all he wants.
Pity doesn’t get you elected.
Groucho48
In defense of Power Point. Here’s Elizabeth Warren delivering a keynote lecture, using Power Point. She appears about 5 minutes in. This was my first exposure to her and it’s been love ever since.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
Applejinx
You know?
It’s fine with me if these guys object to the United States running a big debt. They can talk about wanting to reduce the deficit. Sure…
…just as soon as they ALSO decide it’s ridiculous that their vast wealth exists largely in the form of leverage, wacky financial trickery which I’m given to understand is valued at what, FORTY times the value of all the actual stuff in the whole world?
Sure. Let’s fix the debt and return to common sense ways.
You first.
:P