Make Your Own Engrish Funnies

There is a web app called "translation party," where you enter a phrase or passage in English. It is translated into Japanese. Then back to English. Then back to Japanese, and so on, until equilibrium is reached; that is, when no changes occur during a translation cycle. Here is a passage I posted a while ago:

A very cool picture on EPOD today, taken in Olympic National Park, Washington. That is a lenticular cloud forming as a breeze of very-nearly saturated air rises over a sea stack, cools a tiny amount, leading to condensation and cloud formation. As the air descends again, it warms, and the cloud droplets evaporate. So this would look like a standing wave in a stream; the cloud would appear to be constantly moving, but not going anywhere. Click the pic for bigger, and over to the site for more info.

And here is the "translation:"

Today, Olympic National Park, Washington, EPOD is a very cool photo. Nearby, as well as the very air, not lead to the formation of clouds in the stack trace for the formation of condensation on cooling to increase the saturation of the sea of clouds above the lens is not. Similarly, the air and back down, Attamaru cloud droplets evaporate. Therefore, the standing wave in the stream is a cloud always seems to not go anywhere. Click photo for details and large site.

AHHHHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAH! This explains Beck. His crew have been running his teleprompter notes through this page!

Followup: I just realized if you take the URL of your results, it saves the original phrase. So you can see the whole progression as the "translation" gets further and further off base. Here's the first paragraph of this post.

Followup 2: Here's another that I tried to keep short and simple (long phrases get cut off, and the program does not like technical language or obscure words) that I have to show Iris.

Sometimes Short and Sweet Says it Best

see more Political Pictures

Last Rites for Glenn Beck?

A total of 57 advertisers have asked that their commercials not be aired during his show.

And of course, there are those completely unsubstantiated rumors- utterly baseless, really- that Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Oddly, however, Beck has not denied these allegations, nor have extensive web searches by bloggers uncovered any police reports stating that he did not commit these acts.

I hope we can clear these questions up. I'm sure he's just an ordinary man who happens to have a deep-seated hatred for consensual sex. I'm not saying he hates consensual sex, just that he hates consensual sex.

Followup: I Can't Believe It's Not a Democracy points out that with a reported $6.4 billion second quarter loss, this raises some difficult questions for News Corp's Rupert Murdoch.

Human Experimentation

Mengele. Unit 731. Tuskegee. One might have supposed that with the numerous, well-documented, and disgusting historical occurrences of experimentation on fellow human beings, well-educated and intelligent people- doctors!- would be hyper-alert to the dangers inherent in the activity. One might have supposed. But according to the Guardian...

CIA doctors face human experimentation claims

Medical ethics group says physicians monitored 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and studied their effectiveness.

Welcome to Cheney's wet dream: if you're not certain of the best way to torture whatever confessions you want out of prisoners, get a crack team of CIA doctors to start gathering data.

Practical Jokers

This cheetah are one.Via BuzzFeed.

Mother Nature

is crying.

A crying face is revealed in an ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.Photo: BARCROFT MEDIA

Photo by Michael Nolan, via The Telegraph. Not to get all sappy, but this is a pretty striking photo. The linked story won't tell you much you don't already know.

Which is why it's so sad.

Followup: the above is just a crop of the original published in The Mail Online, with a much more thorough article. Via BuzzFeed; click the pic for full-size.

Mt. Wilson Safe!

Science people have been waiting and biting their knuckles over this, as photos like the one above circulated. The smoke in the above picture, though, is not from the actual wildfire; it's from purposely-set backfires, intended to remove potential fuel before the wildfire reaches the facility.

The result?

Chief Powers expressed his absolute confidence that they will save the Observatory. He said that while it may have appeared over the last day or so that the Observatory was being neglected, that they never lost sight of the importance of Mount Wilson's preservation and it is now their highest priority. He flew up to the mountain yesterday, was delighted with what he found and knew they could achieve success here.

Via The Planetary Society Blog; click over for the full story. YAY!