Pundit Wire

Category Archives: Technology

Reverse the PowerPoint Death Spiral to Mediocrity! Now!

By Charles Crawford | Published: April 2, 2013

PowerPoint Imagine a product that is so successful that many people start hating it, to the point of blaming intellectual decline and other social problems on its very ubiquity. Welcome to PowerPoint.

The expression “Death by PowerPoint” generates about (sic) 4,220,000 results via Google, with myriad links to horrible examples of PowerPoint presentations and surveys that rehearse the damage PowerPoint can cause to thinking minds. “PowerPoint Poisoning” gives nearly 1,000,000 Google results, not bad for a contrived phrase. Who knows, maybe PowerPoint Death Spiral to Mediocrity will now surge up the Google ratings charts.

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Over the Energy Cliff?

By Hal Gordon | Published: January 5, 2013

John Hofmeister America may have skirted the fiscal cliff, but don’t unfasten your seatbelts just yet. Looming ahead is the energy cliff, another avoidable crisis brought on by our own ignorance, complacency and lack of leadership.

That was the grim warning conveyed yesterday afternoon by veteran energy executive John Hofmeister at a meeting of the Houston chapter of the American Petroleum Institute. Mr. Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company, currently heads a public advocacy group called Citizens for Affordable Energy, devoted to educating the American people and our leaders on the need for responsible energy policies.

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WENDELL BERRY’S SPEECH SHOWS WASHINGTON’S DISCONNECT

By John K. Herr | Published: May 15, 2012
farm2

Tom Brokaw is worried that Washington is out of touch. People feel politics “is a closed game that doesn’t address what their real concerns are,” he told Howard Kurtz of the Daily Beast. “It has its own language, it has its own culture.”

Right thought, wrong target. The elder statesman of broadcasting was referring to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner held on April 28. A more telling and troubling example of this disconnect occurred earlier that week, when author Wendell E. Berry gave the 41st annual Jefferson Lecture for the Humanities.

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All Power to the 164th

By Dan Whitman | Published: December 20, 2011
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Asked at a public forum November 3 what resource he would be least willing to part with, planner and Deputy Assistant Secretary Bruce Wharton said without hesitation, “personnel.”

Imagine, in an age of bells and whistles, a value placed on humans and their capacities. Blogster John Brown spoke July 24, 2010, of “The Newest Killer App for Public Diplomacy” – colorless, odorless, environmentally friendly, accessible to all, more effective than social media, and “TOTALLY FREE: face-to-face conversation!”

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Fracas Over Fracking

By Hal Gordon | Published: November 19, 2011
protesters fracking

Not long ago, conventional wisdom held that U.S. natural gas production had peaked and would decline. But then came a new technique for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Overnight, the enormous gas shale deposits of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Pennsylvania were open to development.

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The Digital-Savvy Speechwriter

By Hal Gordon | Published: November 4, 2011
Perry youtube THUMB

What has the digital age done to speechwriting? There are few people in our profession better qualified to answer that question than Clark Judge, managing director of the Washington-based White House Writers Group.

At a November 2 luncheon meeting of the Houston Speechwriters Roundtable, organized by BP speechwriter John Barnes, Mr. Judge spoke eloquently and informatively about using the power of the Internet to maximize the impact of a speech.

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How the GOP Became the Anti-Science Party

By Leonard Steinhorn | Published: September 16, 2011
GOP by By Mike Licht (Thumb)

How did it come to pass that the GOP is in danger of becoming, in the memorable words of Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, “the anti-science party”?

Huntsman, the former Utah governor and U.S. ambassador to China, is the lone GOP candidate who hasn’t hedged on his embrace of science. “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” Huntsman recently tweeted.

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Also posted in Business, Campaigns & Elections, Culture, Economy, General, Health, Media, Political Rhetoric, Politics, Science, U.S. | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Death Warmed Over in Yaoundé

By Dan Whitman | Published: July 7, 2011
THUMBYaounde

You could be interested to know what a death threat sounds like in a poor country. One of the conventions is the recorded sound of machine gun fire over a cell phone. Clarity and branding are everything.

I was in Yaoundé for a month. At 10:20 the phone went off, and I took the call. A very angry man spoke.

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