Flashy Visual Aids = Bullshit

Link to Drum's summary.

Oh, the bullshit I've seen people get away with because they were good speakers, or because they used flashy visual aids...

I actually think that cartoons, diagrams, and written versions of central claims can help the audience a lot, and I use them. But I just don't like PowerPoint. My current compromise is to hand-write and hand-draw overheads. It takes a lot more time to do this, and that helps kill the urge to overdo it, to have too many slides and too much on the page. And since I print (I stopped even trying to do the cursive thing a long, long time ago...) and can only draw stick figures, there's no danger of dazzling anybody with fancy graphics.