Chicken chicken chickens
Being a researcher naturally involves dealing with complicated topics that are often hard to explain to the uninitiated. Understanding how the human brain functions, what the difference between synthetic and analytic languages is or what role landscape plays in the novels of Don DeLillo all requires some prior knowledge about those subjects. Without that knowledge, you may not have the least idea what a teacher or instructor is talking about.
But sometimes it all sounds like babble, even to those familiar with the terminology and the right theoretical background. Maybe you’re tired or distracted, maybe the writer is being vague, or perhaps the presenter is just not very skilled at presenting.
What you then get is best described by this paper and this presentation by computer scientist Doug Zonker.
The interesting part is: to non-academics it is silly to the point of idiocy, whereas I had to make a conscious effort to not fall from my office chair because I was laughing so hard. Subverting conventions is funny, but only if you know them well enough to recognize the parody.
If you find Zonker amusing, be sure to read this as well.
(On Oct 9th, 2007 at 1:45 pm)
and this one: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ (the origin of powerpoint karaoke)
(On Oct 9th, 2007 at 11:29 pm)
Hi, I’m a conference interpreter and this is hilarious. I must admit I never found a speaker whose speech was so obscure as to sound like that, but I could imagine myself in the booth, listening to that and dying with laughter. Thanks ever so much for sharing it.
(On Oct 9th, 2007 at 11:53 pm)
My pleasure. One of the reasons I find it funny is because we have no trouble figuring what kind of presentation it is (same with the paper being a paper), even though all meaning has been removed. In other words, we recognize similarities based purely on formal aspects, even when something makes absolutely no sense.