Addiction to PowerPoint

I'm not out to post a Times story every day, but just can't pass this one up.  If you haven't seen it yet, some awareness has finally crept up on the part of the establishment that PowerPoint is used, overused, and abused to a staggering degree in military briefings.  My only beef is that this story should be classified as at least a decade outdated...we were deriding PowerPoint Rangers (while trying to avoid becoming one) and complaining of Death by PP in the 90's, for cryin' out loud!

There's a side to the program's growth from useful tool to ubiquitous presence to mandatory SOP that's not thoroughly covered here, and it's an age-old tale.  Senior officers want the neatest (and often quickest) way to receive information, mid-level officers want to deliver via that method (and impress their bosses), junior officers emulate their seniors in turn, SNCOs follow in turn, and so on, and so on...until before you know it, any Lance Cpl giving a 5-minute brief to his platoon mates on avoiding STDs is using, yes, PowerPoint.

It's at least a sweet bit of vindication for those of us who wailed way back then that not everything can be broken down and then taught in vague bullet points...some things actually are more complex, or simple, than that.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint