Friday 8 June 2007

I love PowerPoint

I blogged about how much I love PowerPoint for church presentations for a Matthias Media CHN.

After that, Rob Forsyth sent me an absolutely hilarious PowerPoint presentation of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It is almost incomprehensible.

For those who prefer their rhetoric original, here y' go:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

3 comments:

Justin said...

I've got visions of Martin Luther King using PPT for "I have a Dream":

"And let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tenneseee" -- Click Here for a picture of Lookout Mountain.

:)

Craig Schwarze said...

Great speech though. If you haven't already, watch Ken Burn's "The Civil War".

Anonymous said...

Truly a great speech. And one of the best pieces of sustained rhetoric. consider the opening sentences.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

then the second
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

Note how Lincoln connects the two sentences..nation..so conceived..so dedicated

then the third
We are met on a great battle-field of that war
the shortest sentence but still connected to the 2nd..of that war.

I could go and note the repetition of dedicate (6 times in less then 300 words) but its enough to say that like Cranmners prayer book (which Lincoln knew) the sentence structure is complex embedded ..eg the last sentence 80+ words

Simple English ...bah humbug.

the plain English they want us to use destroys half the meaning.