Death by Powerpoint!

     So I just read an article in the New York Times talking about the over-use of Powerpoint in the military and how it's becoming more of a hindrance than a help. I have to say I agree with them. I see several powerpoint presentations a week, and honestly it's hard to pay attention, or sometimes just to stay awake. Powerpoint is really good for showing pictures or movies, but too often people try to use bullet points to actually convey their information, and usually one of two things happens: (1) they summarize way too much, or (2) they write full paragraphs for each bullet.
     In the first scenario, the presentation becomes useless if you're not actually there to see it. Most of the classes I've taken after high school have used powerpoint extensively, and often teachers will post their presentations after class. Some students try to use these as an alternative to showing up, which obviously doesn't work out well. But even if you show up, and miss a talking point, you can't rely on the presentation to give you the information you need. Now personally I don't think anyone's going to leave with 100% of the information presented every time, whether you're using powerpoint or not, so really it comes down to your ability to sift out the crap and write down what matters, a skill not easily learned. But the problem (at least, in our military it seems) is that some people are trying to use powerpoint presentations as little more than illustrated memos, which seems (obviously) destined to fail.
     If you used powerpoint as described in point (2), you might be able to get away with it. But if you're going to do that, you may as well just write a word document and attach some pictures, which would be much easier and probably more effective. Not only that, but these type 2 presentations are terrible! Usually these are the kind made by people who can't bother to memorize what they're going to say, or simply don't know the subject matter that well. The presentations then are reduced to simply reading the slides aloud in front of a group of people. And if they do actually have a speech written, then your audience ends up trying to read all the text and not listening to what you have to say. More often than not the text is tiny, so people are squinting and having to work harder to read it, further obliterating any attention being paid to the speaker. It sucks.
     The problem here is of course not Powerpoint, but the way people use it. The program itself is pretty awesome if you take the time to learn what features are available. But one thing that was interesting about the article is that throughout the whole thing they have quotes from military personnel demonizing Powerpoint, but then at the end include one sentence saying "No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame for mistakes in the current wars, but..." It seems the problem is the people, not the program. Only a poor craftsman blames his tools. There is one quote, though, that I thought was very appropriate:

"Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters."

It seems pretty pictures help when you're trying to say nothing.

Reporting Live from the Surface of the Moon!

Hey everyone! I am officially back in the blogosphere; I'm sure I've been terribly missed. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, I simply haven't had the time or the energy. But things are looking up (for now), and so I've decided to start writing again.

So far, this quarter has started off great. I'm in a new lab, doing new work, and I really like what I'm doing. This quarter I've joined a genetics lab, using the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. In English, fruit flies:

This particular lab is focused on neuron development, and we study neurons in fly eyes. It's actually pretty sweet. There's all kinds of little molecular genetic tricks that we can use that allow us to create individual mutant cells surrounded by normal cells. This way, we can directly compare the neurons from the same animal (which is an important consideration in genetics). It also means that we can now look at what effects certain mutations have in just the eye cells, instead of in every cell. This is important because a lot of mutations are lethal, and it's hard to study how an animal develops if it's dead. What this means for me is that I get to spend a bunch of time collecting virgin flies and dissecting brains. And when the whole fly is less than 2 millimeters long, it's nearly impossible to do.




These guys make it look easy, but trust me, it's actually pretty tough. However, I did manage to pull out one intact brain in my morning dissection practice, so hopefully I'll be able to work up to this level of proficiency.

The other thing that's awesome about this quarter (aside from the fact that last quarter is over) is that I'm not taking a class. So really, the only thing I have to do is work and go home. It's making things so much better. Trying to do research work, teach a class, and take a class, on top of all the various other things that pop up during the week, is just a recipe for disaster. It's not the fact that there's so much work to do, it's that everything becomes just another thing on the list. The mentality switches from trying to focus and learn something to just getting everything done. And even though everything did get done, it wasn't done nearly as well as it could have been, so then I feel like I've done bad work, even if I haven't. So yeah, this quarter I'm just doing my fly work, and teaching a class. I'm super stoked.