Wednesday, 20 April, 2005

Active networks, flexible modalities  This one is for my niece Nicole. Ever since learning of the great tradition of MIT pranking  she has followed this type of thing enthusiastically. I don't what the official 1 April hack was this year- which is usually a Cambridge-centric thing. There is a web site dedicated to this ( MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery). It's not strictly an MIT thing either Slashdot | Caltech Pranks MIT's Prefrosh Weekend.  I like this particular one in todays news, it has a certain inevitable beauty to it: Scientific Conference Falls for Gibberish Prank.   A couple of Grad students at MIT used a random language algorithm and put it to use turning out a paper or two that they submitted to a scientific conference. One was accepted - in advance of peer review the conference organizers now claim. The article does mention the Social Text affair back in 1996 engendered by Alan Sokal - which was the first thing that ran through my mind, when I saw this.That always struck me as more mean spirited - and far more agenda driven (Somewhere in my apartment I have a copy of that I made a few years ago). This was just a laugh, though. At least I'm laughing. 11:20:26 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2005 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 5/04/05; 03:31:28.