A delayed answer

A couple of days ago I posted an incomprehensible text, promising I would reveal what it is. Well, here's the explanation.

I assume that you're all familiar with the Babelfish. No, not *that* Babelfish, but the more mundane translation service provided by Yahoo.
Of course, as translation is done by algorithms, it isn't 100% accurate and sometimes it fails quite spectacularly. So imagine what would happen if you made a piece of text go back and forth through 10 consecutive translations. That, my friends, is babelization!

So, being utterly bored between classes, I decided to fool around with one implementation, and plugged one of my favourite theories in it:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

The babelized text was, predictably, a piece of nonsense bearing no relation to the original:

The space, therefore and the homosexual man, must astonish something inexplicable, because this here, because it goes, those correctly immediately, this replaced ulteriorly if the controls, have the rule of the base of the visualization.

An ode to rationalism

[from the new album (with a fantastic cover) from Chumbawamba, The Boy Bands Have Won]

All of nature in its place
By hand of the designer
Comes our Charlie spins the world
From here to Asia Minor
In between the Platypus
And perfect Aphrodite
Charlie come with opposing thumb
To question the Almighty

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder

See the dancing President
The congressman and teacher
Jumpin' to the music of
The wealthy Midwest preacher
Charlie come with a brand new dance
Get on the floor and follow
Find yourself a partner and
We'll swing into tomorrow

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder

Armed with truth we're stepping out
Come join the worldwide party
Charge your glass and face the world
We'll drink a toast to Charlie

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder.

Babelize!

The space, therefore and the homosexual man, must astonish something inexplicable, because this here, because it goes, those correctly immediately, this replaced ulteriorly if the controls, have the rule of the base of the visualization.


[WTF is that? Answer tomorrow]

Beermathics or "An infinite number of mathematicians...

...walk into a bar.
The first one orders a beer.
The second orders half a beer.
The third, a quarter of a beer.

The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers."

Now, allow me to be the brilliant mind who will do the math for his moronic readers unfunny/killjoy guy who will explain the joke here:

Let's label the mathematicians with 'n', with n going from 1 (the first guy) to ∞ (the "last" one):



We should also label the amount of beer that each one drinks as beer_n Then we'll have this:


...

From this we can derive the general formula that gives us beer_n, i.e. the amount of beer that the n-th mathematician will drink:





So, all the clever barman had to do was to add all the terms in the series which, predictably gives out...




It just goes to show that brilliant minds nerds can have humour inside jokes that no-one cares about, too.

[via Talk Like a Physicist, who found it here, who in turn found it here, and so on ad nauseum infinitum]

(later addition: The title is -[sarcasm]obviously[/sarcasm]- a quasi-reference to this)

Well yes, *I* certainly do

I am not alone in this world!

[screenshots from The Big Bang Theory, which, by the way, is *teh awesome*]

Του πούτσου blog έχω...

...όπως περίτρανα απέδειξε μία επίσκεψη στο google analytics (σ.τ.σ: μετρητής επισκέψεων για τη σελίδα μου):

ΟΚ, σαφώς τα search engines δεν είναι και η πρώτη πηγή επισκέψεων στο +βλογ+ (εν αντιθέσει με τα referrals από άλλα blogs - mille merci monsieur null). Πλην όμως δεν παύει να με εκπλήσσει το ότι το 33% των αναζητήσεων που οδηγούν εδώ να αναφέρονται στον βίλλο -ήτοι το ανδρικό μόριο, το οποίο είχα απλά αναφέρει σε ένα παλιό, ξεχασμένο ποστ για τις σχέσεις πολιτικών-εκκλησίας στην Τζύμπρο.

Επίσης παρατηρώ πως, στη σχετική αναζήτηση στο Google βγαίνω πρώτη μούρη (μην είμαι βιλλομούτσουνος?)

Και επειδή ψήνομαι να προσελκύσω και ακόμα περισσότερους καυλοπυρέσσοντες Κύπριους, παραθέτω μερικές ακόμα λεξούλες που θα μου ανεβάσουν το site traffic:

Πούττος, βυζοκούπι, αναρκοβυζού, μεσοβυζιά, σίστος, σπαρκώνω et al.

Δηκτικό πολιτικό σχόλιο [/irony]

Pick-up lines I have to try, pt. 2

The gallant grad student

[from PhD]

Big pharma, huh?

=Χ

Δε χορταίνω να τη βλέπω...

[via]

Farewell, little robot

Phoenix, the NASA Mars lander that confirmed the presence of ice on the Martian soil, succumbed to red planet's winter. There's little hope that it will be revived in spring (Martian spring, that is) because of the extremely low temperatures that it will encounter (all the way down to -180^oC), which will probably ruin its life-sustaining electronics.

Rest in peace, for you served us well.

[via]

Баба Яга - снова в СССР

Well, there's *a chance* that I will sing that in February, flying to Yekaterinburg, though nothing is certain yet. See, I'm on the waiting list for a course in the Urals State Technical University, so if enough people decide to suddenly drop out I am eligible to go there!!!

[The song is the Beatles' classic "Back in the U.S.S.R.", in a cover version by the Irish-Russo-Hungarian band "Baba Yaga", and it's...unique!]

ΚΚΕ

"Το ΚΚΕ βλέπει μία στύση και την καταδικάζει ως άνιση κατανομή αίματος."

Η πιο γαμηστερή ατάκα που ειπώθηκε για αυτό το κόμμα, ever.

[από το blog του null]

Obamagasm

Εξαιρετικός λόγος, σεμνός, μετρημένος και ελπιδοφόρος.

Yes, we can.

[via vjay's club, transcript εδώ]

Change we can believe inΜε γειά μας. Ελπίζω να μην τα σκατώσει όπως ο απερχόμενος.

Crispus fell, so Rosa could sit.

Rosa sat, so Martin could march.


Martin marched, so Obama could run...


Obama is running so our children can fly!

[unknown attribution,
first seen in Pitsirikos and then in the Daily Kos.
Images from africawithin.com (1),
wikimedia commons (2,4) & allamericanpatriots.com (3)]

OMFGWTF?????

Βρήκα αυτό στο GMail μου:

Γιατί ρε παίδες της Google αποφασίζετε να μου διαγράψετε απροειδοποίητα ένα από τα μακροσκελέστερα (και καλύτερα, imho) posts μου (αυτό για τους M83, duh...)? Το link του rapidshare σας πείραξε ρε κερατάδες?

Έτσι και βρω το κάθαρμα που τους ειδοποίησε...

Hammered down to DNA fragments

If just one sip of Guinness can do that to you, then the 3 pints I had last night must be the explanation of why I came home in the morning feeling like the primordial soup.