Evolutionary Path From Ornithomimus Dinosaurs to Birds: Image of Dinosaur With Feathers

A paleontologist's discovery of the fossil of an ostrich-like dinosaur with tail feathers and skin in the legs is stirring up excitement in the scientific world, in case you hadn't noticed. Other discoveries pointing toward that evolutionary path have been made before -- in China, for example, as I remember. However, this new one adds importantly to the accumulating mass of related finds, from which it also benefits, I think, in terms of the internet chatter we're witnessing.

READ/SEE: Dinosaur With Feathers

Next time you eat chicken -- or ingokho to many Kenyans -- just remember it's a living dinosaur. Give it the respect it deserves.

A Turn, Always

There's always a turn in the road -- indeed, many turns -- which you have never taken, and may long have been intrigued by. Take such a turn, and you will see: see things you've never seen, and which not even the Internet has an account of whatsoever, from your way of seeing. And not just see: feel. Have feelings that make you not simply the person you presently are, but the one you're becoming, truly.

I took such a ('left') turn today, and came upon many lovely homes that I'd never seen, in which people live that I don't know -- perhaps just don't know yet, or perhaps know but have not imagined live quietly here -- in a serene neighborhood which was suddenly new to me. 

Hardly a resident on the sidewalks, but a scatter of parked and parking cars -- arranged as the neighborhood and the city desire that visitors arrange them. Hardly any sight or sound of children behind the fencings, nor of their parents and minders. Not of their older siblings and cousins either. 

A sense, nevertheless, of an unstoppable digital migration. A sense that belying the laid back physical ambiance was a vigorous and dedicated electronic chatter all over the air.

Anonymous people, then; yet people I have probably seen elsewhere -- in the streets of downtown Iborian, in the suburban malls, in other 'elsewheres'. Or who have seen me drive by -- seen the car I drive (and which is my, truly my, wife's) driven by as frequently as they think they remember. 

People who may even remember my face from behind the wheel, or from many chance encounters in public places, shared venues. People you wouldn't want to call strangers, because you had this deep feeling that living in the same city somehow bonded you, the all of you, mysteriously and gladly, into a oneness; and that the bonding was the reason the city continued to be as it was -- and to evolve as it was.

But one guessed, alright, that today the residents were probably there, taking it easy near mid-day on a sun-shiny Saturday. Or if not, then, perhaps like me, they were mostly out -- the day being what it was, the time seeming proper: out to/from the supermarkets, out to/from the malls, out to/from the barbers and the "saloons" and the tailors and the petrol stations and all the places worth being at.

I was, thusly, 'left' to my own devices. I was on my "own O!" 

I soon came to a dead end, though, and did a U Turn at once disappointing and prepared for. The turn I'd taken didn't exit at the other end and so couldn't take me to a road I'd thought/hoped/ doubted it might -- the hope that had prompted me to take the turn in the first place, on this day.

I turned left, at the point I'd moments earlier turned left, and drove home.

PowerPoint and the Incoherence it Breeds

There's been, in this decade, some serious conversation in the print media and in cyberspace concerning PowerPoint's tendency to make the presenter look stupid and bereft of coherence(Read this piece from Tad Simons, for example).

It is the same decade in which PowerPoint, taken as a mark of savviness and with-itness, has infiltrated all sorts of NGO presentations and documentation in this part of the world and, clearly, elsewhere. The meme that it is, PowerPoint has, largely through that route, found its way into academia -- into the vast majority of the word-processed term papers and CATs that undergraduates and graduate students deliver to their lecturers, who are silently overwhelmed by the growing tide of bulletized simple-mindedness and even incoherence.

Bulletized texts and the disappearance of paragraphs and coherence are so ever-present, so matter-of-fact, that I suspect many students and 'tech-savvy' managers consider them to be just how things are supposed to be, are, and are irresistibly becoming. Because I remained unaware of the conversation I have mentioned above, until just a couple of weeks ago, I believed I was waging a losing rear-guard war against a malaise that I was determined to wage a war against, regardless. I just hadn't thought of doing a Google search for Internet chatter about PowerPoint. My loss, for I would have been more evidence-based in my expressons of unease regarding PowerPoint.

It was with great surprise and relief, then, that, on April 27 (to be precise), I came upon the bold assertion, by a US Joint Forces Commander of all people(via a tweet by @Crossdawson), that "PowerPoint makes us stupid". I immediately retweeted it (@MauriYambo). For the full story, which I urge all to read, click here.

There's more online than the above links suggest, as a Google search will quickly reveal.


A Contra Contrarian View:
For a "contrarian" support for PowerPoint, read Carmine Gallo's In Defense of PowerPoint.