This week on National Geographic is Earth: The Biography (A-). The series is hosted by Ian Stewart (the host of "Hot Rocks") who is quirky yet interesting. I really like this series because it is somewhat filmed like Planet Earth (maybe not as good) but it also contains some of the most recent scientific data and insights that are missing in a lot of the older specials still on TV.
So far the most interesting part for me was during the Atmosphere show. I have never considered skydiving because I think it would be a minute of pure terror, however I never knew that at the start of the space program around ~1960 someone jumped out of a special balloon 90 miles above the earth. It took them 15 minutes to fall back to the ground and they were so high that when they jumped there was no wind resistance of any kind blowing on them until they reentered the lower layers of the atmosphere.
The series has reminded me of the importance of a good presentation. More impressive to me than the HD images has been the sequence of the presentation. If you had to do 1 hr on Ice, what topics would you cover and how would you flow between them?
The book Made to Stick should be required reading before being able to install Power Point at work. I would grade the avg presentation at work to be a D with some of the better ones a C or C+. It does take a lot of time to create a good presentation and it makes some of the best, like An Inconvenient Truth, so interesting to watch.
Here is a great presentation on 3rd world myths.
