So, today, my girlfriend sent me a link to this comic by XKCD (CAUTION: Not Safe for Work language, namely, the F-Bomb). What’s funny about it is not so much the content, but the fact that they’re ripping not only on Linguistics, but specifically on computational linguistics. Having done a bit of corpus linguistics myself, I couldn’t help but laugh, and, quite frankly, he does have a bit of a point at times. So, I applaud him for taking a strong stand.

As a counterstrike, I propose that some bored Computational Linguist create a corpus of all the text from XKCD’s website. That way, no matter their feelings, fears, or secret desires, XKCD will always be aiding the cause of Computational Linguistics. Our revenge will be swift and searchable.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Computational Linguistics, Language Humor, Notes, Tirades. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.