Information Does Not Exist?
Anonymous Junkie writes "Here is a piece of academic research publised in this month's 'Journal of Knowledge Research' claiming that Information Does Not Exist. The abstract is available freely online. The wording is a little too scholarly for me but it looks like a worthwhile read. I wonder what this new revelation holds for librarians and IT folks."
The abstract is not only false, it is exceptionally information dense, with many rather esoteric references. For example, it uses the word nacirema, an apparent nonsense word that is actually american spelled backwards. /. firmly in the Guiness book next year. I was very pleased to be able to demonstrate mathematically that this record was a theoretical maximum and will thus stand forever, although the proof is too long to be contained in this post.
This likely comes from a classic parody scientific article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" from American Anthropologist 58:3, June 1956, Reprinted in "A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown". Here we have an April Fool that refers to other April Fools.
I have counted 147 such references in this one abstract alone, which is over twice the old world record for an abstract based April Fool and will place
Who is John Cabal?
Wow that's a lot -- I can only see a few dozen, and I wrote it. A few are mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but I doubt anyone has caught them all. I'd list them all in the margin here but there's not enough room.
364 days a year I send out a Library Link of the Day, but like CmdrTaco here, on 4/1 I have a bit of fun.