Simply a masterpiece!

The good German weekly newspaper Die Zeit (www.zeit.de) has published an article by Josef Joffe that touches an extremely hot issue.

The article, which appeared in the July 26 issue nr 31, was entitled: "Warum PowerPoint-Präsentationen und Marketing-Jargon Sprache und Geist beschädigen".

In English: "Why PowerPoint presentations and Marketing Jargon damage language and our minds".

It is in the same line as a previous comment made in the previous issue of Ariadne about the invasion of superficialism in all areas.

Wikipedia defines the term superficial as follows:
Superficial is a general term meaning "regarding the surface", often metaphorically. Both in the literal as in the metaphorical sense the term has often a negative connotation based on the idea that deeper parts are also important to consider. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superficial)

However the climax of Josef Joffe’s article comes when the journalist presents the Pericles' Funeral Oration from Thucydides, or else the Epitaph of Pericles as we are used to call it, by means of compressing it into five (yes, five: 5) PowerPoint slides.

You can download the article here, or visit the page of the Zeit newspaper or access the PowerPoint presentation.

Closing this brief worth to read note, I would like to add that the article’s spirit is served in the best way with the following cartoon…