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(mouse over or touch photo to enlarge faces) |
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Giufà, la luna, i ladri e le guardie, 4X |
3 |
Unt**led |
4 |
Pictured, identified by order of joining: |
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[also pre-1.0], (2) |
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Not pictured: |
7 |
Update: A reader familiar with the team writes to point out that, out of the list of 60 names above, 41 Microsoft people were in technical engineering positions (development, program management, or quality a***urance): 22 men (54%) and 19 women (46%). The reader notes: “That was a very unusual balance in 1992, and would still be unusual today.” |
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From left: |
9 |
PowerPoint at 25: a book |
10 |
Published by Vinland Books 2012, Hardcover 6" × 9", 512 pp., $35.00 (ISBN: 978-0-9851424-0-7) Full PDF searchable, 512 pp., Free (ISBN: 978-0-9851424-1-4) Paperback 6" × 9", 512 pp., $17.99 (ISBN: 978-0-9851424-2-1) Ebook for Kindle (all platforms), $2.99 (ISBN: 978-0-9851424-3-8) Ebook EPUB (Google, Apple) , $2.99 (ISBN: 978-0-9851424-4-5) |
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Hardcover and paperback formats are available worldwide at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon j***an, Amazon China, Amazon India, or buy from Barnes and Noble, or buy from booksellers around the world via Abebooks, or find the book from a local independent bookstore via Indiebound, or order online with free worldwide s***pping to over 100 countries . |
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Ebook formats are available worldwide through Amazon Kindle stores (US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, j***an), Google Play stores (US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, j***an, Korea, Russia, Spain), and Apple iTunes stores (US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia). |
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Full PDF format (fully searchable and with links to references) is available worldwide for free download here, www.robertgaskins.com/powerpoint-history/sweating-bullets/gaskins-sweating-bullets-webpdf-isbn-9780985142414.pdf. |
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PowerPoint at 25: a T-s***rt |
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Order from RedBubble for $20.98 plus s***pping, available worldwide. |
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PowerPoint at 25: a tote bag |
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Order from RedBubble for $18.97 plus s***pping, available worldwide. |
18 |
The Wall Street Journal, (3) |
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“ … the culture of PowerPoint is something that bemuses, concerns and occasionally appalls PowerPoint’s two creators as much as it does everyone else.” |
20 |
“Robert Gaskins was the visionary entrepreneur who in the mid-1980s realized that the huge but largely invisible market for preparing business slides was a perfect match for the coming generation of graphics- oriented computers.” |
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(L. to R., GBU Wizards #3, #1, and #2) (2) |
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(Photos by Judea Eden, herself GBU Wizard #17 in 1988.) (2) |
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Communications of the ACM (2) |
24 |
“Robert Gaskins reflects on the 20th anniversary of his invention—PowerPoint—and how simplicity, not limitations, ruled its design and inspires its legacy.” |
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CACM (2) |
26 |
CACM, (2) |
27 |
“Despite the lush graphics effects so easily produced by modern presentation programs, most presenters should return to formats nearly as spare as the old overhead transparencies … more matter with less art.” |
28 |
The Atlantic, |
29 |
“ … she talks with a group of eighth graders … who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. To entertain themselves, they hosted a PowerPoint party on Sat****ay. Each of them prepared a slide presentation on a topic of their choice (ranging from astronomy to unsolved murders to Disney princesses) and shared it with the others over the videochat software Zoom. They … explain the appeal of a PowerPoint party over other kinds of virtual hangouts.” |
30 |
ARTnews, |
31 |
“The software that emerged as ‘Presenter’ more than thirty years ago, then became PowerPoint and its brethren, has transformed the way we teach and hold meetings and manage relations***ps and wors***p. … Recognizing the ubiquity and epistemic imperialism of the slide deck, many artists—including David Byrne, Tan Lin, Daniel Eatock, Timothy Evans, Michael Riedel, Linda Dong, Simon Denny, and Tony Cokes—have taken up the medium, adapting its modes of address to comment on contemporary managerialism, information labor, and media culture.” |
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PowerPoint, Communication, and the Knowledge Society |
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s.v. (2) |
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et al. |
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Kleines Al(e)phabet des Kommunikativen Konstruktivismus, |
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“On the crumbling wall of a former C18th foundry in a small town in England, there is a short notice. It reads ‘in this furnace, Abraham Derby frst smelted iron ore with coke and thus began the modern age.’ It is perhaps misleading to compare Abraham Derby’s extraordinary innovation with ‘the world’s frst laptop presentation’ in Paris in 1992, and yet Robert Gaskins and his colleagues have to be credited with a development that has radically transformed the way in which knowledge is communicated and instantiated. … a seemingly innocuous innovation has had a profound impact, not only on science and education, but business, the law, medicine, and even religion.” |
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(Professor of Sociology, King’s College London) |
38 |
Sat****ay Night Live, |
39 |
“Two women struggle to make a PowerPoint Presentation.” |
40 |
Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint (5) |
41 |
a16z.com, |
42 |
“A fantastic founders story told by founder and creator of PowerPoint, Bob Gaskins. This book details all aspects of the history of the product from before the genesis (founder origin) … . It details the journey after the acquisition of Forethought through their move to Sand Hill Road R&D offices, the full rewrite in C++, and becoming a cornerstone of Office for Windows and Mac.” |
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“PowerPoint achieved a degree of ‘world changing’ that few products do; from the boardroom to the cla***room to the courtroom to the pew, PowerPoint has defined how people deliver information, good, bad or otherwise.” |
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“In a series of over 200 1‒3 page almost-‘blog’ posts, Bob details many specific scenarios such as deciding which platforms to target, which tools to use, the first screen presentation, transition to color Mac, and more. This is enormously fun to read.” |
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(former Senior VP of Office and former President of Windows at Microsoft) |
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New York Times, (5) |
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“Makennah Gatica, who is in eighth grade in Lubbock, Tex., knows exactly what she wants for Christmas: record albums, Puma sneakers, posters and slippers, all relating to her love of BTS, the South Korean boy band. To convince her mother to buy some of these items, Makennah, who is 13, created an 85-slide PowerPoint presentation. … Rather than just emailing the doc***ent, she delivered its contents in person, standing before her mother to make the full audiovisual pitch. ‘I like to add music and do my own intros and stuff,’ Makennah said.” |
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Vulture.com, |
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“Wearing a black s***rt and headset mic, the speaker paces the stage, expounding upon each new bullet point that appears on the screen behind him, while thousands of audience members sit in rapt attention before breaking into roars of laughter … it’s comedian Demi Adejuyigbe … and he’s delivering the joke with boring old office software that’s recently found a second life in the comedy world: PowerPoint.” |
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Refinery29.com, |
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“PowerPoints are popping up on Tinder profiles and being sent to first dates … they’ve officially transitioned from the cla***room and boardroom to the Garden of Earthly Delights that is modern pop culture … .” |
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Acquired.fm, |
53 |
“ … this is the same story as Uber, right? This is the same story as Instagram. It’s just in an office environment and with PCs. It’s incredible that there was instant product-market fit, even as the product changed so dramatically. The world wanted exactly what PowerPoint was—the first, second, and third times. And … PowerPoint right now owns 95 percent of that market. That is, that is unreal.” |
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[With the PowerPoint acquisition, Microsoft Office has] “ … probably done over three hundred billion dollars of revenue since the beginning of Office, and just Office, not including Windows ... I don’t think it would be where it is today without having PowerPoint.” |
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(length: 01:13:58, includes transcript) |
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BBC Capital, |
57 |
“PowerPoint is one of the most successful, enduring and influential pieces of software ever invented. … Bob Gaskins was the man behind it.” |
58 |
BoingBoing, |
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“(Robert Gaskins) envisioned the user creating slides of text and graphics in a graphical, WYSIWYG environment … . The presentation would spring directly from the mind of the business user, without having to first transit through the corporate art department.” |
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“PowerPoint is so ingrained in modern life that the notion of it having a history at all may seem odd.” |
61 |
IEEE Spectrum |
62 |
Indezine, (2) |
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“Perhaps it really should not come as a surprise that the generation schooled to use PowerPoint, when faced with new requirements, would find innovative ways to use the tool they already knew well.” |
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Gulf News, |
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“… new research showing that [PowerPoint] remains as pop****r with young tech-savvy users as it is with the Baby Boomers. An online poll by YouGov showed that 81% of UK Snapchat users agreed that PowerPoint was a great tool for making presentations.” |
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Eventbrite Blog, |
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“Today’s PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful piece of software, which has been three decades in the making.” |
68 |
a (2) |
69 |
n (2) |
70 |
m (2) |
71 |
O (n2 + m2 ) (2) |
72 |
O (nm) (2) |
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Presentation: Video, view from YouTube (5 mins 33 secs) |
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Paper: Preprint (PDF, typeset in PowerPoint), download from CMU |
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PowerPoint File: PPTX, download from the author’s website |
76 |
Mondaq, |
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The original US trademark registration for PowerPoint, 1987, pre-Microsoft (click to enlarge). |
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“ ‘POWERPOINT,’ as a coined word in English, is original. Given that the doc***ented evidence was insufficient to prove that ‘POWERPOINT’ had become a generic name, the trademark ‘POWERPOINT’ could function as a source identifier and was registrable as a trademark.” |
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For why and how the word was coined, see also the history of the name in Conversation with Robert Gaskins. |
80 |
Bento, |
81 |
“PowerPoint succeeded because it spread rapidly by viral transmission … every time early adopters used our product effectively, they demonstrated its value to other potential customers.” |
82 |
Zamzar Blog |
83 |
Zamzar Blog, (3) |
84 |
“ … we had been fortunate to launch our PowerPoint product just at the same moment that Microsoft had become convinced that they needed essentially the same product.” |
85 |
“You had to plan ahead a great distance and ‘call the shot’ accurately, since a considerable investment was required before much in the way of feedback, let alone sales, could be available.” |
86 |
Bill Gates on decentralized knowledge within Microsoft: “We don’t lack the power to enforce our decisions; we lack the information about what we should require.” |
87 |
Medium, |
88 |
“To my surprise, applying PowerPoint best practices to my date proposal made me a better dater.” |
89 |
Marginal Revolution |
90 |
Wired UK, |
91 |
“Steve Jobs once said that the personal computer was like a ‘bicycle for the mind.’ PowerPoint was the first product to make that a reality for millions of us.” |
92 |
vast |
93 |
Wired’ |
94 |
The Daily Clog, A Cal blog by The Daily Californian, |
95 |
“Berkeley alums from across the board are notorious for doing amazing things with their degrees.” Five examples of “Berkeley brilliance”: Doug Engelbart, Paul Debevec, Marguerite Higgins Hall, Robert Gaskins, and Madelyn Dunham (Barack Obama’s grandmother). |
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Discusses in part how PowerPoint got its name. In a comment, someone suggests he may be the person who had earlier trademarked “Presenter” for software, thus forcing the extra thought to come up with the distinctive name “PowerPoint.” |
97 |
BBC News, |
98 |
“Microsoft's earliest acquisition, PowerPoint … may have been more valuable to Microsoft than any of the more than 100 acquisitions it has made since.” |
99 |
Macleans Magazine, |
100 |
“PowerPoint Karaoke … half improv comedy, half parody of corporate culture, and a way to reclaim one of the most loved—and reviled—computer programs of all time.” |
101 |
“These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting.” |
102 |
Forbes, |
103 |
“Sometimes I look at the links of what people are creating, and I think, my goodness this is interesting. It’s turned into something far beyond traditional presentations, something that when we were creating it, we never could have imagined.” |
104 |
“PowerPoint is not simply a presentation tool, but is also capable on leveraging into other areas such as creating games, artworks and animations.” |
105 |
New York Times (4) |
106 |
(Click to enlarge slide) |
107 |
“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” |
108 |
“Don’t blame the messenger: The problem is not in the tool itself, but in the way that people use it—which is partly a result of how inst**utions promote misuse.” |
109 |
Military.com |
110 |
“With Powerpoint, the military has been moving toward an oral tradition and away from the written word, with all the demands for precision, nuance and serious exposition that writing requires. And it's not just a problem for the military.” |
111 |
Computerworld, |
112 |
“Smartest acquisition … PowerPoint [because it] later became one of the core programs of Microsoft Office, which for many years has been the dominant office productivity suite.” |
113 |
(CIO INSIGHT) |
114 |
“I do quarrel with logic that says ‘Stupid people are a***ociated with X, therefore X is stupid.’ Stupid people are a***ociated with everything.” |
115 |
“… presentation software developed by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin for the American computer software company Forethought, Inc.” |
116 |
Mindjet Connections, |
117 |
“It seems to me most people choose the wrong time periods for thinking about work/life balance. … A startup is a chance to balance out your work and life over many decades.” |
118 |
The Graduate |
119 |
“How [Berkeley] grad students and alums led the design of personal computers,” thirteen of the key contributions including “the world’s most pervasive software program for presentations, PowerPoint.” |
120 |
“In four slides or less, please provide readers with content that captures who you are. … You are limited to text and static images to convey your points.” |
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a***ociated Press, |
122 |
“By adding PowerPoint to its application, Chicago thinks it might attract more students who have the kind of cleverness that can really pay off in business, and fewer of the technocrat types who sometimes give the program a bad name.” |
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blog.pmarca.com |
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“Don't bother with a long detailed written business plan. Most VCs will either fund a startup based on a fleshed out PowerPoint presentation of about 20 slides, or they won't fund it at all.” |
125 |
“We like business plans that present a lot of information in as few words as possible. The following format, within 15-20 slides, is all that's needed … .” |
126 |
Freakonomics Blog (New York Times) |
127 |
“by far the best part of [Gomes’s] column is the reflections of Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin, the creators of PowerPoint” |
128 |
The Wall Street Journal (2) |
129 |
“ … the culture of PowerPoint is something that bemuses, concerns and occasionally appalls PowerPoint’s two creators as much as it does everyone else.” |
130 |
“Robert Gaskins was the visionary entrepreneur who in the mid-1980s realized that the huge but largely invisible market for preparing business slides was a perfect match for the coming generation of graphics-oriented computers.” |
131 |
Communications of the ACM, |
132 |
“Robert Gaskins reflects on the 20th anniversary of his invention—PowerPoint—and how simplicity, not limitations, ruled its design and inspires its legacy.” |
133 |
“Despite the lush graphics effects so easily produced by modern presentation programs, most presenters should return to formats nearly as spare as the old overhead transparencies … more matter with less art.” |
134 |
In Business, |
135 |
“Let’s ask Bob Gaskins, a man with many intensely held interests …” |
136 |
Brand Eins, |
137 |
“Ihre Produkte kennt mittlerweile beinahe jeder–doch wer sind die Köpfe hinter Word, Excel und PowerPoint?” |
138 |
(“The revolutionaries of the office: just about everyone in the world knows their products—but who are the brains behind Word, Excel and PowerPoint?”) |
139 |
Brand Eins (2) |
140 |
Wall Street Journal, |
141 |
“We should give it to the Iraqis. We’d never have to worry about them again.” |
142 |
Linux Magazine, |
143 |
“I used to use PowerPoint to make my slides. I still think PowerPoint is a perfectly good application.” |
144 |
Wired Magazine, |
145 |
“Poking a finger into the eye of thought … .” |
146 |
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within |
147 |
(While at his website, don’t fail to buy his justly famous books on analytical design.) |
148 |
www.sociablemedia.com, |
149 |
Also, in longer interviews, Don Norman (Northwestern), Bob Horn (Stanford), Richard E. Mayer (UCSB), Gene Zelazny, and Seth Godin discuss PowerPoint and respond to Tufte. |
150 |
PC Magazine, (2) |
151 |
“PC Magazine didn’t review it. We were PC snobs. … Three years after that … we did review it.” |
152 |
Chicago Tribune, |
153 |
“ … one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous technological tools ever concocted.” |
154 |
“Beware of PowerPointlessness.” |
155 |
USA Today, |
156 |
“Next time the Pope gives one of his Easter Sunday addresses off the Vatican balcony, odds are he’ll use PowerPoint.” |
157 |
“If anything, Powerpoint, if used well, would ideally reflect the way we think.” |
158 |
IEEE Spectrum, (3) |
159 |
“Now that Vugraphs are so easy to create and change, the world has run amok with the giddy power of presentation graphics. A new language is in the air, and it is codified in PowerPoint.” |
160 |
San Jose Mercury, |
161 |
“… we’ve had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see its earnings skyrocket.” |
162 |
“The Microsoft Corporation announced its first significant software acquisition today, paying $14 million for Forethought Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. … Forethought would remain in Sunnyvale, giving Microsoft a Silicon Valley presence. The unit will be headed by Robert Gaskins, Forethought’s vice president of product development.” |
163 |
The essential point, on day zero: “Allows the content-originator to control the presentation.” |
164 |
This is the complete description of what the PowerPoint product would be, who would buy it, and why; written about one year before initial s***pment—now years ago. |
165 |
A presentation derived from the preceding doc***ent, which also served to illustrate what sort of presentations would be made by the future PowerPoint. |
166 |
Lots of details about the transition to being part of Microsoft. Addressed to all 16 wizards on board at year end, with copies to Bill Gates, Jon s***rley, Mike Maples, Jeff Raikes. |
167 |
Includes our cast list of “all the wizards, in order of appearance”, the names of the first 125 people who worked on PowerPoint 1984–1994. |
168 |
Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint |
169 |
Pmarca Guide to Startups. |
170 |
The Graduate, |
171 |
Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint. |
172 |
Working with Words and Images: New Steps in an Old Dance, |
173 |
New York Times. |
174 |
“In one of the most unusual PowerPoint presentations ever given in Dwinelle Hall, ex-Talking Head David Byrne poked fun at the pop****r Microsoft software’s bullet-point tyranny and Autocontent Wizard inanity. But he also defended its appeal not only as a business tool, but also as a medium for art and theater.” |
175 |
“ … [Engineering Professor Ken] Goldberg’s preamble was in the form, of course, of a PowerPoint presentation: one with snapshots of businesspeople in offices. They turned out to be 1992 photos of the original team who created PowerPoint, led by Berkeley alumnus Bob Gaskins and Dennis Austin. When Goldberg announced the two men were in the audience — ‘To us engineers, you’re rock stars!’ — the applause was almost as loud as it had been for Byrne.” |
176 |
“Did the PowerPoint talk in Berkeley for an audience of IT legends and academics. I was terrified. The guys that originally turned PowerPoint into a program were there, what were THEY gonna think?” “Bob Gaskins … did tell me afterwards that he liked the PowerPoint as theater idea, which was a relief.” |
177 |
Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information |
178 |
“I have been working with PowerPoint … as an art medium for a number of years. It started off as a joke … but then the work took on a life of its own as I realized I could create pieces that were moving, despite the limitations of the ‘medium.’ ” |
179 |
(The book’s website has more, along with installation photos from New York and Tokyo.) |
180 |
“Now the person makingthe presentation canmake the presentation.” |
181 |
Seated, from left: |
182 |
Standing, from left: |
183 |
Computer Poems, |
184 |
Resistance to Civil Government |
185 |
Moving Mountains: The Art of Letting Others See Things Your Way, |
186 |
View video at Internet Archive (3) |
187 |
View video at Youtube (5) |
188 |
Not |
189 |
only |
190 |
Annals of Improbable Research, |
191 |
Flatland, |
192 |
Open PowerPoint presentation |
193 |
Described in the Jaffe article in the Wall Street Journal (listed in press, above). |
194 |
(Buy actual PowerPoint Ranger patches here) |
195 |
“And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln.” |