PowerPoint is 25 Years Old

Really! It turned 25 a couple of weeks ago. I use it quite frequently. Sometimes it helps if one is prepared but it cannot rescue an ill-prepared presentation, and indeed can make a bad thing worse. I take a very poor view of people who put too much stuff on slides and/or read slides. These people should be slapped for not knowing that the audience can read. The BBC News Magazine has an article on how people mess up making presentations with it. A bit from there below the fold.
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B Raman: “Counter-terrorism & Appeasement”

Mr. B Raman, in his South Asia Analysis Group paper of 20th August — “Counter-terrorism & Appeasement” — writes:

* There have been four acts of mass casualty terrorism since 1981. All the four were carried out when the Congress (I) was in power in New Delhi.

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Looking for Causes must precede the Finding of Remedies

Garrett Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) proposed what he called the First Law of Ecology, which states “You cannot do only one thing”. He is also the author of the 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. I admire Hardin for his deep ecological thinking. Here’s a quote from his book ‘Living Within Limits:Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos‘ (1993, OUP).
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Making the 10th Board Exam Optional

Furious re-arranging of the deck chairs going on as the ship sinks. “The Class X board exams will become optional in all CBSE schools from the coming academic year (2010-11).” (rediff.)
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Time to Simplify

Richard Feynman wrote that he was mystified by the different ways — ways that bear no resemblance to each other — in which a fundamental law of physics can be described. He conjectured that perhaps it was because the fundamental laws are simple. “Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in several different ways without immediately knowing that you are describing the same thing.” [1]
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Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

Greetings on Ganesh Chatruthi.

May Vigneshwara (the remover of obstacles), Ekadanta (the One with the one Tusk), Mahakaya (One with the Huge Body), etc., remove the obstacles to your ventures. I am sure that he will remove the writer’s block that I have. I have made the appropriate invocations to him. Here’s a wonderful prayer to Nadapratithishta, the One who Appreciates and Loves Music.

Below the fold you will find another pretty good song to Ganapati and a list of his 108 names.
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Can too many Rights be Wrong?

Rights appears to be all the rage these days. The right to this, that and the other. For example, in the US, the acrimonious debate about healthcare — a right to cheap medical services — is reaching unhealthy levels. Nationalized healthcare (and all other things as well) seems to be the preferred route in the US. It seems everyone has a right to a bail out from the government — sick automobile companies and banks included. In India, the newest right on the horizon is a right to “compulsory and free education.”
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