Sunday, October 20, 2013

If You Like Your Vogon Poetry, You Can Keep Your Vogon Poetry

Today's assignment: Compare two selected items from Al Gore's Amazing Internet TM and determine which one is more subject to rational description.

The first is a sample of Vogon poetry found in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But first, a little background on Vogon poetry:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience members died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council, survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

    
Here is the Vogon poem, written by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council :
    
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!



Below is a diagram of all the known interfaces in Obamacare. If you would like to see it in a size that makes it readable, click on the diagram below, and when the page comes up, click on the diagram again to get it to full size..

As anyone who's worked in IT can tell you, the greater the number of interfaces in a system, the greater the complexity and difficulty involved in building the system architecture that executes it. And the greater the likelihood of an execution failure somewhere. If you're reading this in October, 2013, you're already seeing the system's failure, as the simple task of registering people and allowing them to log on to the system has brought it to its virtual knees.


Your assignment: Choose either the poem or the diagram and explain it to a person of average intelligence so that he or she understands it.

No comments:

Post a Comment