MEANINGLESS MILESTONES

25 years of the simpsonsCongratulations to Matt Groening, Al Jean, and co. on achieving this meaningless milestone.

Now, please, for the love of God, do the merciful thing and end it. It’s too late to bow out with dignity. You will never surpass Sazae-san. There are no more plaudits left to achieve. You ran out of ideas over a decade ago. The next episode is about the Simpsons meeting the aliens. You are just throwing stuff at the wall now.

WHAA...?!

Mrs. Krabappel

It’s a Christmas miracle! Dearly departed Springfield schoolmarm Edna Krabappel has returned, and she’s writing scientific studies with her colleagues Margaret “Maggie” Simpson and Kim Jong Fun.

The trio’s latest study, about a “new methodology for forward-error correction,” has been accepted for publication into two real-world scientific journals.

Unfortunately, it’s all a cruel hoax, as Vox explains:

Of course, none of these fictional characters actually wrote the paper, titled “Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations.” Rather, it’s a nonsensical text, submitted by engineer Alex Smolyanitsky in an effort to expose a pair of scientific journals — the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems and the comic sans-loving Aperito Journal of NanoScience Technology.

Yes, Smolyanitsky’s intentions were good, but did he really have to drag a beloved dead woman into his twisted scheme and give us false hope that she might still be out there, somewhere???

While this incident certainly doesn’t bode well for Krabappel’s future in academia, we can only hope she continues to send more cryptic messages from the great unknown.

[Vox via The Washington Post]

TREEHOUSE OF ERROR

Here’s an intriguing headline from Vox:

The Simpsons predicted Russia's current economic downturn back in 1999

And here’s an excerpt from the actual story:

Of course it was not actually “predicting” today’s Russian economic downturn, but rather riffing off the earlier downturn, of which there have been several.

So, basically, the show didn’t predict it at all and your headline is a blatant lie. That’s some good reportin’ there, Lou.

Wait a minute… this was all a ploy to get us to learn about the Russian economy, wasn’t it?!

Learning? Russia? Let’s get out of here!