Category: Discoveries

The division between “bland attempt at humor” and “disturbing suggestion of existential despair” is not always strong in Beetle Bailey.

The Light Bulb

By Mike Topp

I think man got the idea for the light bulb from those cartoons when someone gets an idea.

The DBC of CS

Social engineering at its finest: SCIgen uses a context-free grammar to generate comp sci papers entirely too much like those from which I’ve been expected to learn for the past two years. It’s a little scary how good the results are. I was able to read the entire abstract of my personal paper while nodding my head, although the first clause of the introduction (“Unified metamorphic methodologies have led to many unfortunate advances”) broke the spell.

Oh, right, the social engineering part is that they got one of their generated papers accepted to a conference. Well-played, humans who probably remember daylight!

Further Keyhole obsession: I’ve finally proved to my satisfaction that New Circle Road in Lexington is not a circle, but a teardrop-shaped gob of snot headed southeast to Richmond.

For the record, I am SO WATCHING YOU.

Update 1040 hrs: I just spent like half a damn hour playing with this thing, flying all over Louisville and trying to figure out what looks like what from the air. I never properly understood how huge the (now-closed) Showcase Cinema parking lot was. Is. Also, if you get driving directions and superimpose them on the satellite images instead of the map? Things don’t quite line up, so to get anywhere it is apparently necessary to tear up a lot of lawns and drive directly down the median of the highway.