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Sunday, August 11, 2013

The Humor of Calculon 2.0

When I first saw this, I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen:



I literally had to pause it so I could catch my breath.  It's hard to explain why, and it's nowhere near as funny on re-watch, but some things just strike you the right way.  You should watch it before I talk about it.

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It's obvious why it's funny.  The professor's insistence that this is science while performing what is clearly a ritual of dark magic is the apotheosis of humorous juxtaposition.  But what made it so ROFLMAO funny for me probably has a lot to do with my background.  My job title is Computer Scientist (though, at the end of the day, I'm more of an Electrical Engineer).  And I know that a lot of what I do looks like a black art.  It's not always easy for me to explain how I get a computer working or a piece of code running.  From the outside, it can look like meaningless rituals that perform magic.  And in that context, this was an over-the-top, power of the robot devil version of that, and that's what made it so funny for me.

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