Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken [pdf] (opens in new tab)

It's satire. Pretty good satire, IMO. If someone had simply dumped the word chicken in to a document broken in to paragraphs, it probably wouldn't get many laughs, but this document is very well executed.

When you look at a lot of academic papers, you begin to notice patterns. It's very easy to get wrapped up in what you're doing, looking past how silly some of it can be. This document takes it to the extreme, but there are plenty of papers published on mind numbingly banal topics.

That's why it's funny. It's a means of poking fun at one's self.

I don't think there is a reason to be insulting. If you are legitimately asking a question - don't be rude. If you just don't like it - use the flag.

By itself is not that funny, but when you see the video posted here in the comments then you realize the joke in the full context. :)

Yes, 43, going on 5. I laughed.

Yabba-Doo.. Yippity-Yabbity-Doo [1]

HECK YEAH, WE're 5 !

[1] - Scoobypedia

Wow. That is the hardest I've laughed this week.

I loved the part where he referred to the slides to help answer a question.

Holy crap! I'm not sure I've ever heard an audience react that hysterically before. That is infectious.

Good 'till the last cluck.

Chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken:

    #!/chicken/chick/chicken
    
    chicken Chicken(chicken, chick, c):
    	 chicken chicken >= chick:
	 	# Chicken chicken chicken
	 	chick chicken(chicken-c)
	 chick:
		chick chicken

It is grammatically correct, since nouns can be verbed -- chicken can be a noun, verb and even adjective, even though its verb form doesn't have a defined meaning -- it's just meaningless. Think of it like this:

    struct chicken chicken(struct chicken chicken) {
        return chicken.chicken;
    }

This will parse, it just won't compile, since we're missing the definition of struct chicken.

Contrast with "chicken go fly", which is grammatically incorrect, but meaningful.

I think any 2 argument function will work? At least in clojure.

    > (defn chicken [x y] 1)
    #'sandbox5403/chicken
    > (chicken chicken (chicken chicken chicken))
    1

(define chicken list)

Really? The typesetting is the only problem you noticed with it? Did you notice any typos?

More interestingly, it has been cited 9 times.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9396708367921284731&...

Chicken

HN has always had room for the occasional off beat. Since this is a clever parody of a stock computer science paper, it's not even a stretch to understand why it got upvoted. I admit that I didn't get it, though, until I watched the (much funnier) video. It's really a parody of a stock computer science talk, with associated paper.

Me too. The official one feels clunky and cartoonish.

But Innovation has been a good addiction replacement:

http://innovation.isotropic.org