Science and technology links

[erudito]

Great wallpaper against PowerPoint™. The essay on why PowerPoint™ is evil (or, at least, a disastrous way to present technical data).

Best article ever about Wikipedia™:
Crackpottery is to Wikipedia what self-interest is to capitalism - a human failing that, yolked in the right way, can turn ill into benefit for all. Before Wikipedia, what would

Comments

[anemone]

You might enjoy the Gettysburg Address (famous speech in US history) as a powerpoint presentation:
http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

Thank you

[erudito]

That's great, in a cleverly "truly awful" sort of way :)

[marycatelli]

On the other hand, McMaster's Beta Colony has all the hallmarks of a society in demographic collapse, and then they slap restrictions on top of that. . . it would never have lasted.

Meanwhile in the real world, evolution is occurring. It's selecting for lack of contraception use and for sloppy usage.

[jordan179]

On the other hand, McMaster's Beta Colony has all the hallmarks of a society in demographic collapse, and then they slap restrictions on top of that. . . it would never have lasted.

Remember, however, that reproduction in Beta Colony is essentially painless, as you don't have to carry the fetus to term but can instead have it extracted at a fairly early stage and put in a uterine replicator. Also, the Betans are a long-lived population with an only slowly-expanding life support system.

Meanwhile in the real world, evolution is occurring. It's selecting for lack of contraception use and for sloppy usage.

Well, or for the desire to have children. Elaine Morgan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Morgan_(writer)) predicted this, decades ago -- that contraception would shift the population genetically toward those who really wanted to have babies, because those who didn't, wouldn't genetically affect future generations.

[marycatelli]

Ah, but while pregnancy can be painless, conception is not. And there's still childraising -- most people who do not want children nowadays want to avoid that, not pregnancy.

Those who desire to have children do in fact lack contraception -- though I phrased it badly as "lack" often carries the meaning of not mere absence but imposed absence. "absence of contraception" would have been better.