Thursday, September 4

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

Anyone remember the lecture Joan (I think) gave us about presenting? How we are overreliant on powerpoint etc. Quite. This is a lovely example for the prosecution, by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google. First, here's the original.
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 battlefield 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.
Now see the The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.

5 comments:

Nixoniad said...

Off topic:

Meat Loaf.

http://blog.risk.net/2008/09/there_oughtta_be_a_law_and_the.html#more

Sophia said...

Hahaha, good work. And I googled it and you are cited in many other financial info sites. We def need to think of even more ridiculous challenges and spread some nonsense round the internet.

Although, as a point of order, shouldn't you notify us of your progress in the comments of your post asking for suggestions of quotes, then it'll be easier to keep track?

Nixoniad said...

I'll just report them as I go in whatever post is currently top, and then save them all up for a big post at the end of the year.

Sophia said...

Fair enough. BTW, nice find Liam. Sad reflection of US dominance of the internet that it's Lincoln and not Churchill.

"Where we'll fight them:-
*Beaches
*Landing grounds
*Fields
*Streets"

etc...

Nixoniad said...

Oh, and:

The Princess Bride.

http://blog.risk.net/2008/09/only_mostly_dead.html