I’m an engineer, and I have seen way too many PowerPoint slides.

So I exult in the fact that the forum for the Large Hadron Collider at Fermilabs has banned PowerPoint slides in their presentations:

A physicist is more than the sum of his or her slides.

That’s why, about six months ago, organizers of a biweekly forum on Large Hadron Collider physics at Fermilab banned PowerPoint presentations in favor of old-fashioned, chalkboard-style talks.

“Without slides, the participants go further off-script, with more interaction and curiosity,” says Andrew Askew, an assistant professor of physics at Florida State University and a co-organizer of the forum. “We wanted to draw out the importance of the audience.”

In one recent meeting, physics professor John Paul Chou of Rutgers University (pictured above) presented to a full room holding a single page of handwritten notes and a marker. The talk became more dialogue than monologue as members of the audience, freed from their usual need to follow a series of information-stuffed slides flying by at top speed, managed to interrupt with questions and comments.

“We all feel inundated by PowerPoint,” Askew says. “With only a whiteboard, you have your ideas and a pen in your hand.”

If Zombie Osama bin Laden were to were to wage Jihad against PowerPoint, I would gladly join his evil minions.